EducationCincinnati, Ohio A student with autism was asked what makes his teacher laugh. He responded, &dquo;Boy, I don't even know that. I guess I'll never know about that.&dquo; The social impairment associated with autism is reflected in his answer, as it is in the many behaviors associated with this complex disorder. To further understand the social behavior of persons with autism, researchers have focused on social cognition --the cognitive skills required for social interaction. This area of research has dismissed some longheld beliefs, while piecing together a new understanding of the social and behavioral challenges facing persons with autism.Social cognition research helps to explain the effectiveness of a new approach to teaching social behavior that centers around social stories. Social stories are short stories that describe social situations in terms of relevant social cues and often define appropriate responses. For some students with autism, social stories have been successful in improving their responses to social situations within a short period of time. After a brief review of literature providing a rationale and direction for writing social stories, this approach will be described in detail.

Attempted to examine the generalizability of environment/development relationships among 3 ethnic groups across the first 3 years of life. Social status did not show a consistent relationship to either quality of home environment or children's developmental status across the various groups. Results indicated a fairly consistent relationship between HOME scores and children's developmental status, although there were some ethnic and social status differences in the relationship. Measures of specific aspects of the child's home environment, such as parental responsivity and availability of stimulating play materials, were more strongly related to child developmental status than global measures of environmental quality such as SES. When the child's early developmental status and early home environment were both very low, the likelihood of poor developmental outcomes was markedly increased compared with cases when only one was low.

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193 basically healthy working-class and middle-class mothers and their infants participated in a 4-year longitudinal study which focused on the relative potency of several clusters of variables for predictions of intellectual and language outcome during the preschool years. The major results were: (1) Measures of perinatal or infant physical status were extremely weak predictors of 4-year IQ or language. (2) Assessments of child performance were poor predictors prior to 24 months, but excellent predictors from 24 months on. (3) Assessments of mother-infant interaction and general environmental quality were among the best predictors at each age tested, and were as good as measures of child performance at 24 and 36 months in predicting IQ and language. (4) Measures of the family ecology (level of stress, social support, maternal education) and parent perception of the child, especially when assessed at birth, were strongly related to child IQ and language within a low-education subsample, but not among mothers with more than high school education. Patterns of prediction were similar for 48-month IQ and 36-month receptive language; predictions were notably weaker for 36-month expressive language.

193 basically healthy working-class and middle-class mothers and their infants participated in a 4-year longitudinal study which focused on the relative potency of several clusters of variables for predictions of intellectual and language outcome during the preschool years. The major results were: (1) Measures of perinatal or infant physical status were extremely weak predictors of 4-year IQ or language. (2) Assessments of child performance were poor predictors prior to 24 months, but excellent predictors from 24 months on. (3) Assessments of mother-infant interaction and general environmental quality were among the best predictors at each age tested, and were as good as measures of child performance at 24 and 36 months in predicting IQ and language. (4) Measures of the family ecology (level of stress, social support, maternal education) and parent perception of the child, especially when assessed at birth, were strongly related to child IQ and language within a low-education subsample, but not among mothers with more than high school education. Patterns of prediction were similar for 48-month IQ and 36-month receptive language; predictions were notably weaker for 36-month expressive language.