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Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and/or Autism (IwD) are among the smallest group of individuals with disabilities attending college. However, as these individuals exit our school systems, they are increasingly seeking both postsecondary education opportunities and competitively paid employment in STEM fields. Unfortunately, while options are improving, access to STEM related post-secondary education and employment remain limited. IwD often experience learning and communication challenges that manifest as difficulties related to executive function and social relationships. Thus, individuals are likely to experience unique challenges that make adjusting to postsecondary and employment settings difficult. Investigating creative education solutions for IwD that support both the development of STEM skills necessary for employment and also promote critical thinking and problem-solving skills is one possible way to address the unique challenges presented by an untapped talent pool and the low employment rates of the group. One approach that may prove promising for increasing STEM education and employment opportunities for IwD is spatial visualization skills instruction, and some research suggests such an approach may also be beneficial for IwD. This research team implemented two pilot studies to explore: 1) how a curriculum designed for improving the spatial skills of first-year engineering students contributes to the development of spatial skills for IwD; 2) what modifications are needed to make the curriculum more accessible for IwD; 3) what are the limitations or benefits of virtual versus in-person teaching for this particular population; and 4) what are the perceptions of IwD regarding the curriculum and their capacity for success in STEM. Results from this pilot work, although limited, indicate IwD can improve spatial visualization skills through exposure to the curriculum. This paper includes results from two pilot studies and discusses plans for expanding the scope of this work in the future, including expanding the intervention to include CAD instruction, in partnership with Siemens, to develop a STEM career pathway for IwD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with an autism spectrum disorder face the daily challenge of social interactions -- particularly in non-verbal communication. These difficulties make adequate interpersonal interactions "in realtime" a challenging obstacle to overcome in many cases and can lead to excessive demands, frustration and isolation (low level of Theory of Mind). Emotion cards are usually used in autism therapy to learn basic skills for recognizing emotions. Learning with autism is characterized by spontaneous -- sometimes- extraordinary -- mastery of complex contents. People with autism learn facts, details and routines well but have difficulties to transfer the learned contents to another context (Weak Central Coherence) or to react flexible to unpredicted events (low Executive Function). In addition, research has shown that autistics learn social competences while using a computer and performing practical exercises. Such systems provide the possibility to use an accepted computer simulated (virtual) environment in which autistic children can be taught social competences as emotion recognition. Consequently, we assume that learning emotion recognition in virtual learning environments can remove barriers and obstacles for autistics as they are more successful in solving social problems. Therefore, we are discussing in the paper at hand the potentials of how emotion recognition can be learned in virtual reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading can be a way to increase students' social interaction and writing, especially for the need to continue to a higher level of education. Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show deficits in reading skills. Recent research shows that there is heterogeneity in this population, which is accompanied by a lack of personalized learning facilities. That way, there is a gap between students, learning, and the support they need. This research aims to produce a curriculum design based on personalized learning with the help of interactive media in beginning reading skills. The curriculum development model used is the Nicolls model. The results of the study show that curriculum development using the Nicholls model can be used for curriculum development in Special Schools (SLB). This is because the model emphasizes contexts and situations where curriculum decisions need to be made. In addition, the results of a limited trial show that this curriculum design is effective for students with ASD. This can be seen from the increase in student learning outcomes in beginning reading skills, especially in introducing words, syllables, and letters. Future research is described in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This experience report focuses on engineering students regarding the topic of inclusivity and retention by assisting students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). With earlier diagnoses and comprehensive support in secondary school, more students with ASD are enrolling in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) curricula in college [1-3]. Students with ASD can encounter many obstacles when entering college [4]. Despite academic success in the coursework the student with ASD may face distinctive challenges in the classroom, such as sensory issues, or other needs like organizing assignments, time management, and peer mentoring, that are not addressed by traditional accommodations. All these challenges impact overall performance and present an impediment for the students to engage in the overall college experience. At Arizona State University we have developed a program for engineering students with ASD that is an interdisciplinary coordination between our Fulton Schools of Engineering college and College of Health Solutions. The program hires mentors from both colleges, engineering students and students studying ASD, to assist engineering students with ASD with executive functioning skills, finding resources, socializing, advocating for themselves and navigating the campus. ASD manifests differently in every individual. Therefore, the mentors follow a curriculum developed by the faculty, which is also personalized to individual needs. The mentors assess the needs of the student and apply the relevant strategies to each individual. The initial goal of the program is to better the students' academic and social experience in college and to increase retention of engineering students with ASD. This experience report will discuss this new program, lessons learned, how it is expanding, and provide comments and feedback from ASD students and mentors in the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern scientific projects connected with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) study the difficulties in differential diagnosis of ASD and other types of developmental dysphasia, issues of cognitive and physical development of children with ASD, formation of trajectories for their individual and group education and training, their social integration. The relevance of the study is explained by the necessity to work out a system of medical, psychological, linguistic and educational support for children with ASD corresponding to the modern requirements of society and global practices. The aim of the research is to develop a comprehensive model of neuropsychological assessment and study of speech development for preschool children with ASD. This model assumes the implementation of a) the Russian-language version of the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP), b) the Russian-language version of the BVL battery for speech assessment (BVL_RU), c) traditional for Russia approaches to the diagnosis of developmental disorders and speech impairment. The platform for the project is the kindergarten of Kazan Federal University "We are together". The comprehensive model includes a new methodological framework, which implements the achievements of cognitive sciences, neuropsychology and neurolinguistics in interdisciplinary fields. The results of the research can be implemented into the practice of teaching preschool children with ASD and become the basis for the further development of this comprehensive model for schoolchildren with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern scientific projects connected with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) study the difficulties in differential diagnosis of ASD and other types of developmental dysphasia, issues of cognitive and physical development of children with ASD, formation of trajectories for their individual and group education and training, their social integration. The relevance of the study is explained by the necessity to work out a system of medical, psychological, linguistic and educational support for children with ASD corresponding to the modern requirements of society and global practices. The aim of the research is to develop a comprehensive model of neuropsychological assessment and study of speech development for preschool children with ASD. This model assumes the implementation of a) the Russian-language version of the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP), b) the Russian-language version of the BVL battery for speech assessment (BVL_RU), c) traditional for Russia approaches to the diagnosis of developmental disorders and speech impairment. The platform for the project is the kindergarten of Kazan Federal University "We are together". The comprehensive model includes a new methodological framework, which implements the achievements of cognitive sciences, neuropsychology and neurolinguistics in interdisciplinary fields. The results of the research can be implemented into the practice of teaching preschool children with ASD and become the basis for the further development of this comprehensive model for schoolchildren with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are unemployed at a high rate, in part because the constraints and expectations of traditional employment can be difficult for them. In this paper, we report on our work in introducing people with ASD to remote work on a crowdsourcing platform and a prototype tool we developed by working with participants. We conducted a six-week long user-centered design study with three participants with ASD. The early stage of the study focused on assessing the abilities of our participants to search and work on micro-tasks available on the crowdsourcing market. Based on our preliminary findings, we designed, developed, and evaluated a prototype tool to facilitate image transcription tasks that are increasingly popular on crowd labor markets. Our findings suggest that people with ASD have varying levels of ability to work on micro-tasks, but are likely to be able to work on tasks like image transcription. The tool we introduce, Assistive Task Queue (ATQ), facilitated our participants' completion of image transcription tasks by removing ambiguity in finding the next task to work on and in simplifying tasks into discrete steps. ATQ may serve as a general platform for finding and delivering appropriate tasks to workers with autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that besides the core symptoms of impairment in communication, social interaction and repetitive behaviour, seriously compromises adaptive functioning limiting social inclusion. A number of studies also support executive dysfunction in ASD, although its specificity remains controversial. Furthermore, recent studies point to the relevance of ecologically valid executive tasks that match patient's daily lives and therefore address the correlation with social cognition and learning of adaptive behaviour. These disabilities are usually addressed in rehabilitation therapies, usually performed in a scheme of one therapist for individual, having high costs for the individuals and patient associations in human resources. This usually results in lesser hours of intervention, leading to lesser impact of the behaviour training. To avoid this impact, some technological responses have been arising in the literature to perform training of individuals with ASD, although lacking scientific validity. In this work, we propose a platform for training daily activities in controlled environments, which allow caregivers and therapists to follow the patients' performances and improvements along the time. This platform contains several serious games, which target specific adaptive and executive dysfunctions. Games can be added to the platform and become automatically available for the users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]