Intellectual and Developmental Disability News

Research has shown that when students with disabilities shape their own learning, career and life goals, they attain higher levels of achievement than when following routine curriculum and plans. A University of Kansas researcher has earned a grant to test an evidenced-based intervention designed to enhance self-determination in community-based settings for adolescents with autism to improve education, community participation, and physical and mental health outcomes.

Sensorimotor issues aren’t well understood in people with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, yet they are important because they can be observed before social and communication indicators for the disorder, and they can predict worse functional outcomes. Such skills can impact everything from handwriting to zipping up a coat to language development, with implications for education and independence over a person’s lifetime.

As the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools and forced many children with autism spectrum disorder to be schooled at home, professionals and families became concerned that children with disabilities might not be receiving adequate and specialized instruction because teachers had limited time or resources needed to support all children and parents.

Brian Boyd, director of the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project at the KU Life Span Institute, was invited by Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street, to join an advisory meeting on May 18th to discuss recommendations for new resources for Sesame Street and Autism: See Amazing in All Children. 

LAWRENCE - The Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training, part of the University of Kansas Life Span Institute, will host the conference Autism Across the Life Span on April 23. The virtual event will address the needs of families, professionals, and educators interested in autism spectrum disorder. The one-day event will feature 16 breakout sessions on behavioral health, interventions, research and neuroscience, and transition.

LAWRENCE – The University of Kansas Life Span Institute is partnering with the Baylor College of Medicine to host the 54th annual Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities from April 5 to April 8, 2021. 

Researchers at the University of Kansas have launched a study to test the outcomes of a career design model, delivered virtually, that supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to set and work toward self-determined career goals. Testing the delivery of self-determination interventions via telehealth is timely not only because of the pandemic but also because it extends delivery options in rural areas.

Richard L. (Dick) Schiefelbusch, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, longtime director of the Bureau of Child Research, and namesake of the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies, has died at age 102. 

University of Kansas researchers, in collaboration with the University of North Carolina, have secured a new grant to test the combination of two interventions designed to help students with autism spectrum disorder boost educational achievement and improve their transition to life after school.