A preliminary study of a Math digital based intervention in children with intellectual disabilities.

Intellectual disability is a general term that describes intellectual capacity and adaptive functioning. There are many causes and many co-occurring conditions. To appreciate and respect the uniqueness of each individual and to choose appropriate interventions, it is critical that, if possible, the cause for intellectual disability be identified or the conditions that led to or sustain it be recognized. This chapter begins with an overview followed by an approach to understanding causation, a description of how etiology is determined, consideration of the neurobiological/environmental interface, a discussion of the evaluation process to determine causes and conditions related to diagnoses, and a discussion of risk factors. Intellectual disability is an intellectual, cognitive, and developmental disability that profoundly affects an individual’s functioning and adaptation to everyday life. Intellect refers to mental ability or capacity, the power of thought, and the ability to reason and solve problems. Mental capacity is distinguished from perception, emotions, and feelings. Intelligence refers to facility and quickness in understanding and problem solving. In intellectual disability, there is reduced mental capacity. Cognition refers to the use or handling of knowledge through mental activities associated with thinking, learning, and memory, which are necessary processes to acquire knowledge. In intellectual disability, there are cognitive disabilities that vary depending on the individual syndrome. The extent of intellectual disability varies among syndromes, and there may be variations within a syndrome. Both cognition and intellect are linked to cortical brain function. Intellectual disability is a developmental disability with onset during the developmental period. Thus, there are delays in meeting developmental mile stones in motor, fine motor, language, and psychosocial areas. Finally, there are difficulties in adaptive function and in the mastery of developmental tasks as a result of intellectual, cognitive, and developmental disabilities. A focus on the etiology of intellectual disability is needed for research, clinical, and administrative purposes. This chapter will review the multiple causes of intellectual disability, considering the interface between genetic, neurobiologic, and environmental factors and causation. It emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive evaluation and provides guidelines for conducting an evaluation. Associated mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders are discussed in chapter 6.

The current study investigated the contributions of background factors (i.e., gender, age, and parents’ education), learning strategies, behavioural engagement in different domains (i.e., reading, writing, numeracy, and ICT), and cognitive skills (i.e., literacy and numeracy) to problem solving in technology-rich environments among tertiary students across 24 countries. The sample for this study comprised 12,148 tertiary students (M age = 25.68 years, 55% female). The results indicated that younger students exhibited better performance in problem solving within technology-rich environments. Furthermore, students whose parents had higher levels of education were more likely to demonstrate higher levels of problem-solving proficiency. Students who employed more effective learning strategies tended to have higher levels of problem-solving abilities. Higher levels of literacy and numeracy performance were associated with better problem-solving performance. Moreover, the study revealed a positive relationship between parents' education at the country level and students' problem-solving performance. This study further explored the similarities and differences in predicting the study variables related to problem solving. The implications of the study's findings were discussed in relation to learning, teaching, and policymaking in higher education. These findings can inform educational practices and policies to enhance problem-solving skills among tertiary students, ultimately improving their preparedness for technology-rich environments.

More people with an intellectual disability are now living to older age and there is a paucity of information about this group of people. Mental illness is 2-3 times more prevalent in people with an intellectual disability than in the general community; however, this often goes undiagnosed and undetected. Additional issues complicate assessment if the person is also ageing. Little is known about the prevalence and nature of mental illness in this group of older people. Instruments used to assist in the diagnosis of mental illness in the general community are not suitable for use with individuals who have an intellectual disability. The Developmental Behavioural Checklist for Adults (DBC-A) (Mohr, Tonge & Einfeld, 2005) is a well established screen for psychopathology; however, it has no standardised norms and has not been specifically validated for older adults. Lack of knowledge and inadequate assessment processes can result in inappropriate service delivery and therefore reduced quality of life for older people with an intellectual disability and their carers. The general aim of the research was to contribute knowledge about older people with an intellectual disability and more specifically to investigate their mental health. In addition, the validity of the DBC-A for use with older adults was examined. An epidemiological study of adults aged 55 years and older, who lived in representative areas in South Australia, and who were registered with intellectual disability service agencies, were surveyed. Familiar informants completed a questionnaire booklet (see Appendix A). The Adaptive Behaviour Dementia Questionnaire (ABDQ) (Prasher, Farooq & Holder, 2004) and, for a subset of the participants, the Dementia Screening Questionnaire for Individuals with Intellectual Disability (DSQIID) (Deb, Hare, Bhaumik et al., 2007a) were also completed (see Appendices F and G). There was a participation rate of 91.7% and participants’ ages ranged from 55-86 years, the majority being males (56.6%), except in the oldest cohort. Those aged 55-64 years appears to differ from those who are older and younger. They have more severe intellectual impairments, more chronic health conditions, they are less likely to be engaged in activities, and have fewer relationships. Those older than 65 years are more similar to older people without an intellectual disability except that more live in nursing homes or larger congregate care settings. Standardised normative data was established for the DBC-A for older people. The DBC-A profile showed age-associated decline in psychopathology; however, the intensity of behaviours was higher in older people with more severe cognitive impairment. Significant psychopathology was found in 16% of older adults. There were no gender differences but those with a moderate level of intellectual disability had the highest rates. Being younger, having fewer hours in activity, living in large congregate care and significant life events were all risk factors. Rates of dementia of between 5-7% were found using the ABDQ, DSQIID and respondent report. A dementia screen using items from the DBC-A (DBC-A Dem) identified almost double that number. There was no association between age and dementia status in this study, which differs from other research, as does the lack of relationship between having Down syndrome and dementia status. The results of this study confirm a picture of differential mortality and the presence of a healthy survivor cohort who have fewer chronic health problems and are more likely to have a mild level of intellectual disability. Although there is an age-related decline in the prevalence of mental illness, rates are still one and a half times more than older people who do not have an intellectual disability. With minor amendments, the DBC-A is a valid screening instrument for use with older people with an intellectual disability. It can record changes in a wide range of emotional and behaviour disturbances including those that may affect older people, including dementia. When used with other DBCs for children and adolescents (Einfeld & Tonge, 1995) it provides a simple and familiar way to record psychopathology throughout the lifespan. This offers clinicians, researchers and service providers a means to monitor and maintain the mental health and well-being of older people with an intellectual disability.

The use of digital technologies in the management of mental illness, and more generally in the promotion of well-being and mental health, has received much recent attention and is a...

The main purpose of teaching translation is to promote students' English learning and cultivate English application ability through translation activities. As a kind of language teaching method, the development of translation activities should serve the teaching goals of the whole classroom, and combine with other teaching methods to jointly promote the improvement of students' English comprehension ability and application ability. The full use of digital information technology and digital resources in English translation teaching will greatly improve the effect of college English translation teaching. In order to deeply explore the role of digital information technology in English translation teaching, we have carried out research on the reform and exploration of English translation teaching based on digital information technology. This paper first discusses the teaching of English translation and its basic methods. This paper will combine the background of digital information teaching to analyze how to apply digital information technology and digital teaching resources in college English translation teaching, so as to improve the teaching effect of college English translation. Cultivate students' interest in learning and enhance students' translation ability. By using the image extraction method, the multimedia construction method and the classroom learning contrast method in the digital information technology, the sample is collected, the technical framework is analyzed, and the algorithm is simplified. And create a digital information technology teaching model. The experimental results of this paper show that the accuracy of dictionary translation is 44.5% by comparing the methods based on digital information technology and resources. The accuracy of the g and b translations is slightly lower than that of the dictionary method, with an accuracy of 40.5%. And the translation method based on digital information technology and resources has the highest accuracy rate of 79.8%. This essentially verifies the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed translation teaching method.

Individuals with disabilities have been less involved in school activities than their peers of the same age and this includes career preparation in science and math (Agran et al., 2019; Eriksson et al., 2007; Jackson et al., 2022). Students with disabilities often lack access to facilities, programs, and equipment, and acceptance by educators, employers, and co-workers (Burgstahler, 1994). The effects of a virtual reality (VR) human anatomy application as the means of teaching science vocabulary definitions and locations acquisition for three different human anatomy systems (digestive, respiratory, and integumentary) to college-age students with intellectual disability (ID) are reviewed. This single subject, multiple baseline study included two transition age youth with ID. The intervention package included both a guided and exploratory portion. Data were collected on the participants’ accuracy on the definitions and locations of ten vocabulary words for each of the three body systems on a paper assessment. Findings indicated that a functional relation existed between the implementation of the intervention package and an increase in the accuracy of scores in both definitions and locations for each of the three body systems for each participant.

Young children vary widely in their levels of math knowledge, their abilities to solve math problems, and the strategies they use to solve math problems. As much of later math builds on children’s early understanding of basic math facts and problem-solving strategies, understanding influences on children’s early problem solving is important. Few studies, however, have examined the home environment in relation to children’s strategy use during arithmetic problems. We examined how both structural characteristics of children’s home environments, such as socioeconomic status (SES), as well as the learning environment, such as engagement in math and literacy activities at home, related to their use of problem-solving strategies for numerical addition problems. Kindergarten children from diverse backgrounds completed a measure of addition problem solving and strategy use, including simple and complex numerical problems. Strategies were coded based on a combination of accuracy and strategy sophistication, with higher scores indicating problems solved correctly with more sophisticated strategies. Parents completed a home activities questionnaire, reporting the frequency with which they and their child had engaged in math and literacy activities at home over the past month. An exploratory factor analysis identified three components of the home activities - a basic activities factor, an advanced math activities factor, and a literacy activities factor. Findings indicated that SES related to children’s strategy sophistication, and frequency of engaging in advanced math and literacy activities at home predicted strategy sophistication, however, engaging in activities at home did not moderate the relations between SES and strategy sophistication. This suggests that family engagement in activities at home may promote early arithmetic skills, and that the role of home environmental characteristics should be considered in children’s arithmetic strategy use and performance over development.

Background/Purpose: In order to change the status quo of children's low levels of physical activity due to excessive academic pressure, a large number of studies have explored the improvement of children's academic performance through physical activity interventions without increasing the burden of learning. With the depth of the studies, the focus has been shifted from the quantitative (exercise time, intensity, and frequency) to the qualitative (e.g., type of exercise), and the cognitive stimulation hypothesis has proposed that the cognitive engagement during exercise has a better facilitating effect on children's academic performance, but there is no consistent definition of cognitive engagement in physical activity. Investigating the effects of different types of cognitive engagement on academic performance not only enriches the body of results in the field of research, but also provides a new avenue of physical activity for students in compulsory schooling. Method: 198 third grade students (M/F=132/110, age=9.42) were recruited and randomized into physical activity intervention conditions of 2 different intensities (high and low intensity) and 3 different types of cognitive engagement (math engagement, skill engagement, and math + skill engagement) on a class-by-class basis. Academic performance in math was tested using a modular math test. Results: Physical activity affected children's math test performance as indicated by significantly higher math test scores post-intervention than pre-intervention (F=63.99, p < 0.01), a significant interaction of test time with intervention intensity (F=8.43, p < 0.01), a non-significant interaction effect of test time with intervention type and test time, but a three-way interaction between intervention intensity and intervention type (F=3.13, p < 0.05). Conclusion/Discussion: Physical activity with cognitive engagement improved children's math test performance, with high-intensity. Mathematically-engaged physical activity had a better promotion effect on math test performance. The present study found that acute physical activity improved children's math test performance, that physical activity with cognitive engagement in subject learning has a better facilitation effect on subsequence subject learning. Considering this finding, it is recommended that physical activity that integrates motor learning with academic learning be organized to further integrate physical education with intellectual education to achieve a win-win situation for both physical and academic excellence in schools by promoting children's academic performance.

This research explores the relationship between digital technology and human resource practices, analyzing contemporary research conducted between 2016 and December 31, 2023. The systematic literature review adheres to fundamental review principles and identifies various studies conducted across various nations on the conceptual application of digital technology in human resource practices. This paper emphasizes the importance of understanding digital technology and human resource practices for all organizational levels, aiming to help professionals build and implement these practices for stronger competitive advantages in the digital technological era. Many methodological (exclusive search) constraints exist in this review, which may limit how well it can be used with additional case studies. Digital technology and human resource practices are essential parts of developing digital and advanced technologies relevant to human resource practices in many aspects. This systematic literature review analysed the relationship between digital technology and human resource practices, demonstrating their interconnectedness through a comprehensive review of research in this field. Both concepts of digital technology and human resource practices linkage was not more focused before. A full understanding of the current state of digital technology and research conceptualization for human resource practices on a single platform through developing a thorough technological concept in human resource practices.

Objective: The present study was conducted with the main objective of explaining the content validity of the ACT-based intervention package for mothers of children with intellectual disabilities, which was designed by the researcher. Methods and Materials: This research is exploratory in terms of its objective and is classified as qualitative in nature. The study population consisted of all books, articles, and dissertations in Persian and English regarding ACT-based therapeutic programs for mothers of children with intellectual disabilities, considering the research’s dependent variables over the last 20 years. Additionally, the population included all experts in the psychology department of Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, who are specialists in the field of intellectual disabilities. The sample from the study population, which included books, articles, and dissertations, was selected using purposeful sampling, and the sampling continued until theoretical saturation was reached. Additionally, from the psychology department of Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, eight psychology professors (experts in the field of special education) were selected. A researcher-made content validity evaluation questionnaire was used to collect experts’ opinions regarding the content validity of the ACT-based intervention program. Findings: The findings showed that the ACT-based intervention package had an acceptable level of content validity, with the CVR (Content Validity Ratio) of all sessions in the intervention program ranging between 0.75 and 1, indicating appropriate content validity for this program. Conclusion: It is recommended that therapists and counselors in the field of therapy use this approach at both educational and therapeutic levels to improve self-compassion, hope, and acceptance in mothers of children with intellectual disabilities.

WPA Working Group on Defining and Managing Autism Spectrum Disorder: spreading knowledge for the next generations of psychiatrists.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a devastating loss of life, staggering economic losses, and untold psychological distress for people all over the world. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have been impacted as well and, in many ways, they are particularly vulnerable to the pernicious effects of the pandemic. Preliminary data reported in the popular press, for example, suggest that people with IDD who contracted COVID-19 have died at more than twice the rate of that of the general population. In addition, most of the services and supports required to optimize inclusion of people with IDD in their communities were severely disrupted during the pandemic. Diagnostic and developmental evaluations to determine eligibility for services, in-home behavioral services, special education and ancillary school-based therapies, and supported employment were limited or halted completely. Indeed, the vulnerability of our systems of services and supports for people with IDD to disruption by natural and human-made disasters was made abundantly clear during the past few months.The pandemic, however, has also provided glimpses into how we could redesign services and supports for people with IDD in ways that could make them more robust and less susceptible to disruption. At the heart of this redesign is technology. At the UC Davis MIND Institute and at other academic health systems around the country, clinic visits with psychologists, psychiatrists, developmental-behavioral pediatricians, genetic counselors, and other professionals were quickly shifted to video visits through video teleconferencing technology platforms, such as Skype© and Zoom©. K-12 schools shifted to online classrooms and curricula, including for students receiving special education services. Families even took educational and fun trips to museums and zoos through virtual reality technology.I believe that a lesson from the pandemic is that technology-delivered services should be more fully developed so as to allow us to continue to support people with IDD when the next disaster makes face-to-face contact difficult. Moreover, I would encourage the widespread use of technology-delivered services as a complement to face-to-face services even during non-disaster "normal" periods of life. Technology offers the promise of making professional expertise accessible to more people, removing barriers that create health disparities based on race, ethnicity, geography, and economic circumstances, and all while providing services in cost-effective ways.At the same time, not every service will lend itself to technology-based delivery, or at least not without considerable adaptation. Anecdotal reports from many parents suggest that online classrooms for students with special needs, without consideration of how to support engagement and reduce challenging behaviors, have not been effective. So, rather than just assuming that every service can be delivered through technology, we must do the hard work of adapting the services and the technologies in an iterative process designed to provide evidence of efficacy, to develop procedures for individualization, and to show that the technology-delivered services can be brought to scale and be cost effective. And finally, there must be evidence that the technology-delivered services reduce rather than reinforce or exacerbate disparities in access that are common according to race, ethnicity, income, etc. If technology just makes getting care more convenient for those citizens who already have access to the best care and does not reach those citizens who are typically marginalized, we have failed as researchers and professionals.In the remainder of this address, I will summarize some of the research conducted by my lab group to develop a distance-delivered, parent-implemented language intervention (PILI). I will also briefly touch on a few other examples of technology-delivered services by other researchers to provide a sense of the scope of work ongoing in the field.There is considerable evidence from longitudinal correlational studies that the ways in which caregivers interact with, and talk to, children shape language development in typically developing children (Hart & Risley, 1995). Importantly, there is also evidence that the same types of parent input and interaction that optimize typical development are facilitative of language in children with developmental challenges, including those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or an intellectual disability (ID) associated with conditions, such as Down syndrome and fragile X syndrome (e.g., Haebig et al., 2013; Warren et al., 2010). The unique learning and behavioral challenges associated with IDD, however, make it difficult for parents and other adult caregivers to engage in these language-facilitating behaviors – behaviors toward which the adults would be naturally inclined. In no way is this to suggest that parents are at fault for their children's language problems. Instead, it is the case that the unique characteristics of the child with IDD, which slow language learning in and of themselves, also "create" an environment that is less conducive to learning than it could be. The goal of PILI is to help parents learn ways to engage their children in adaptive interactions in which the use of language-facilitating strategies is again possible. In other words, we train parents to serve as "therapists" and deliver a naturalistic intervention to their children.The PILI training is largely delivered to parents individually in their homes through video teleconferencing and other digital technologies. Once trained, parents can then engage in supportive, "therapeutic" interactions with their children at home or in other settings that they experience together in daily life. There are many potential advantages of this distance-delivered approach.The goal of PILI is to teach parents to be more "verbally responsive" and thereby more supportive of their child's language learning. A verbally responsive style of interaction entails:Verbal responsivity provides the optimal interactive context for language learning throughout development, although the implementation will differ depending of the age and developmental capacity of the child. Verbally responsive interactions between a parent and preschooler with IDD will look different in many respects from a verbally responsive interaction between a parent and an adolescent with IDD.We have developed and tested different telehealth-delivered PILIs for people with fragile X syndrome (FXS), which is the leading inherited cause of ID and the leading single-gene cause of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The different versions were adapted according to the ages and developmental levels of the target group. At the heart of all the interventions, however, was the goal of improving outcomes for people with FXS by teaching and supporting increased verbal responsivity of parents through technology.We have developed and tested the efficacy of a distance-delivered PILI for 2- to 5-year-olds with FXS (McDuffie, Oakes et al., 2016; Oakes et al., 2015). The intervention was delivered in the context of dyadic play with objects. The participants were six boys with FXS and their biological mothers. The boys ranged in age from 27 to 43 months at the start of their participation in the intervention. All had IQs in the range of ID, and the language levels ranged from no productive language to the production of an occasional multiword utterance.The primary focus of the intervention was on increasing child communication and secondarily on improving spoken language. Parents were taught three strategies. In follow-in commenting, the parent was to describe an object, activity, or event that was the focus of the child's attention. In interpreting/expanding, the parent was to respond to a child utterance with a fuller, more adult-like version and to a child nonverbal behavior with an utterance that ascribed an intention to that behavior. In indirect prompting, the parent was to create a need for the child to communicate by offering a choice or delaying a desired activity or object. The parent was also taught strategies to reduce child challenging behaviors.Parents were taught these strategies over a period of 17 weeks. The dyads visited the clinic once per month. In these clinic visits, the clinician presented the rationale for the strategies to be learned, along with video examples. This didactic session was followed by real-time coaching by the clinician as the parent played with the child. In addition to the clinic visits, there were weekly real-time dyadic play coaching sessions delivered into the home by the clinician through video teleconferencing. Parents were given a laptop computer equipped with a webcam for these in-home sessions. There were also weekly distance observation sessions for the purpose of taking data on the dyad's progress with no coaching or feedback provided. Finally, pre- and post-treatment assessments of play interactions without coaching were conducted in the clinic. Throughout the intervention, the clinician encouraged the parent to use the targeted strategies in naturally occurring interactions throughout the day.We used a multiple baseline design in which the length of the baselines varied and the initiation of the intervention was staggered across participants so that we could be more certain that changes in parent and child behavior were due to participation in the intervention. The primary data for evaluating the efficacy of the intervention came from the observation sessions. In terms of parental behavior, the frequency of use of the targeted strategies increased during the intervention relative to baseline. In fact, there was minimal overlap for most parents in terms of their frequency of use of the strategies between baseline and treatment, although there was variability across parents in the magnitude of change. In terms of child behavior, the frequency of communication acts was greater in treatment than in baseline. This was true in general both for prompted and spontaneous acts of child communication. Increased communicativeness is important because its leads to longer and more satisfying interactions for parent and child and creates opportunities for parents to provide the child with information about the language being learned, thereby creating a positive developmental cascade.Post-treatment surveys and interviews indicated that parents found the intervention to be helpful and felt that their interactions with their children were more positive and fulfilling as a result. These latter findings are important because positive parental attitudes are likely to be a prerequisite for the continued use of the targeted strategies after participation with the clinicians and the study has ended.We have developed and tested the efficacy of a parent-implemented language intervention for preadolescents and adolescents with FXS in three studies, one a series of three single-case analyses (McDuffie, Machalicek et al., 2016), the second a small-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT; McDuffie et al., 2018), and the third an RCT of a medication with all participants also receiving distance-delivered PILI (Thurman et al., 2020). Across the studies, the participants with FXS ranged from 10 to 17 years of age, most were male, and all had IQs in the range of ID. The language skills of the people with FXS ranged from largely single-word and only occasional multiword speech to frequent use of multiword utterances, with all participants well below age-level expectations as regards language.Parents were taught to use verbally responsive language strategies; however, because of the ages of the youth with FXS, the intervention was embedded in the context of shared story telling using wordless picture books rather than play with objects. The book functioned to provide a shared conversational topic for the dyad. In contrast to the study with young children, the focus was on building language skills. The intervention was delivered entirely into the family home through video teleconferencing, with no clinic-based instructional component. The intervention began with two parent education sessions that described the rationale for the targeted strategies and video examples. The intervention then continued for 12 weeks with four types of activities each week.A different book was used each week so that the youth with FXS was not simply learning how to tell a specific story but was instead gaining more generalized language skills. The books were digitized and presented on an iPad.Parents were taught three strategies. The first was to use open-ended wh-questions, such as, "What is the boy doing?" and "How is the boy feeling?" These questions tend to elicit a verbal response and thus, draw the youth with FXS into the conversation and allow him/her to practice new language skills. The second strategy was to use expansions, which entail the parent providing a fuller, more mature version of the youth's utterance and thereby an opportunity to learn new words and syntactic forms. The third strategy was the use of fill-in-the-blank statements in which the parent started a sentence but through a rising intonation and pause conveyed the expectation that the youth with FXS was to complete the sentence. Fill-in-the blank allowed the youth with FXS to participate in the conversation in way that increased the chances of communicative success.The results across the three studies were generally consistent in supporting the efficacy of the intervention. In assessing treatment-induced changes, we examined story-telling interaction with previously unseen books with the parent at home and in the clinic, as well with an examiner in the clinic. In terms of parent behavior, participation in the treatment led to increases in the use of all three targeted strategies. In terms of the behavior of the youths with FXS, participation in the treatment led to sizable increases in a measure of expressive vocabulary (i.e., the number of different words used). The intervention also led to an increase in the length of the dyadic story-telling sessions both in time and number of story-related utterances. It was also found that changes in youth vocabulary were correlated with changes in parental behavior; that is, the more progress the parents made learning the strategies, the more progress the youth with FXS made. Finally, the same pattern of findings was observed for measures derived from parent-youth interactions at home and in the clinic and some non-targeted language skills (e.g., inferential language) also improved (Nelson et al., 2018). These data suggest that the intervention promoted growth in both mother and child behavior that was not specific to a single story or setting but more general to the dyadic shared story-telling context.At the same time, however, there were limitations in the efficacy of the intervention. First, no consistent differences related to treatment were found in the expressive syntax of the youth with FXS. This suggests the possibility that more direct and explicit instruction may be needed to improve syntax in this population. Second, the gains observed for the youth with FXS in vocabulary in their interactions with their mothers did not generalize to their interactions with the examiner in the clinic context. We believe that this lack of generalizability to the examiner-led interaction reflects the fact that unlike the scaffolding that parents were providing through their use of verbally responsive strategies, the examiner by design minimized his/her participation and provided minimal scaffolding. Thus, it may be that the vocabulary skills of the youth with FXS were still forming and not sufficiently developed so as to be used without considerable supportIn summary, a training program for parents delivered into the home through telehealth technology can lead to improvements in communication and language for people with ID across a wide age range. At the same time, however, not all aspects of language seem to benefit from the intervention in its current form and generalization of gains may be limited to highly scaffolded contexts. We plan to address these limitations in future research. We also are exploring whether the coaching can be reduced and supplemented with self-guided online modules to make the intervention more cost effective.Telehealth technology is arguably the most widely used form of technology to deliver behavioral and mental health services to people with IDD. These uses extend beyond treatment delivery of the sort I have described above to in-home assessments and evaluations. No doubt there will be an explosion of examples of other technologies and uses post-pandemic. Here are just a few examples of technologies being tested now.As we move out of the pandemic and achieve some return to "normal" life, it is imperative that we not forget the lessons we have learned over the past several months. We desperately need a more robust and equitable system of services and supports for people with IDD. Evidence-based, technology-driven approaches to delivery of services will be an important part of the solution. However, additional resources and stronger government policies that lead to more and better coordinated systems are also needed. I know that AAIDD will help lead the way forward to improve choice and quality of life for people with IDD and their families.

The development of a school improvement plan (SIP) has become an integral part of many school reform efforts. However, there are almost no studies that empirically examine the effectiveness of SIPs. The few studies examining the planning activities of organizations have generally focused on the private sector and have not provided clear or consistent evidence that such planning is effective. Some studies have even suggested formal planning can lead to inflexible and myopic practices or may simply waste time and resources. This study explores the relationship between the quality of SIPs and school performance by examining a unique dataset from the Clark County School District, the fifth largest school district in the nation. The study finds that, even when controlling for a variety of factors, there is a strong and consistent association between the quality of school planning and overall student performance in math and reading.

For students with intellectual disability the need for effective teaching strategies in Foreign Language Learning is imperative. In recent years, the advent of Augmented Reality (AR) in Special Education has shown promising results. In the present research an AR intervention for English vocabulary instruction of three students with intellectual disability (ID) was implemented. A multiple probe across participants design was used to examine the effectiveness of an AR intervention on the students’ responses regarding identified correct vocabulary items in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in two thematic categories- food and animals. Results showed a functional relationship between the correct responses made during probe sessions and the implementation of the AR intervention for all three students. In addition, a follow up phase was conducted in order to evaluate the maintained outcomes, suggesting that there was a positive maintenance effect. Social validity was also assessed, indicating that the intervention package was practical and useful. Limitations of the present study and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

This chapter is aimed to draw attention to the integrated understanding of an individual with intellectual disability. It is very well known that intellectual disability is described as significant inefficiency in cognitive skills like learning, reasoning, problem solving, and in adaptive behavior, but this is not all when the individual is considered as a whole. This is where emotional intelligence comes in to help the individual cope with the cognitive disability. This chapter will discuss emotional intelligence in people with intellectual disability and how understanding of this will lead to better management plans for individual with intellectual disability, which will in turn lead to better empowerment. Further, this chapter will discuss the research gaps in this area and future study scope.