Intellectual and Developmental Disability News

LAWRENCE — To better serve families, University of Kansas researchers are examining the use of standardized assessments of support needs for children with autism spectrum disorders and intellectual disabilities.

Across the country, more and more young people are being diagnosed as with autism spectrum disorder, including those with high-functioning autism. Yet there is little research into how to help educators serve students with high-functioning autism, especially adolescents in middle and high school settings. New research from the University of Kansas shows that interventions can be successful in helping this population and calls for more research in the area.

While much research has been devoted to the social and communication issues that define autism spectrum disorders (ASD), much less is known about motor deficits that affect the majority of, if not all, individuals with ASD. These include not only repetitive behaviors such as hand flapping and rocking, but also problems with both fine and gross motor skills such as walking, feeding, and lifting and holding objects.

   

LAWRENCE — University of Kansas researchers have found that certain specific parenting practices are significantly associated with the development of communication and language skills in children with Fragile X syndrome. These same parent behaviors are also associated with the growth of socialization and daily living skills of these children. Parenting even mitigated declines often reported in children with FXS beginning in middle childhood.

The different ways autism affects boys versus girls has become a hot topic of discussion lately, especially among health care professions. Newly published research done through the Girls Night Out (GNO) program based at the University of Kansas Medical Center, is shedding new light on ways care providers may need to treat the two genders differently.  

The Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center has been awarded a five-year, $5.40 million cooperative agreement from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The Friends of Life Span recognized outstanding LSI investigators and graduate students at its annual awards dinner held April 8.

University of Kansas researchers have been awarded a five-year, $2.4 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study the effects of parenting on the development and behavior of adolescents with Fragile X syndrome, a single-gene disorder that is the most common cause of inherited developmental disability and the leading genetic cause of autism.