The communication abilities of children of differing ages (4-, 6-, and 11 years) were compared. The children performed two communication tasks and were interviewed in both face-to-face and audio-only contexts. While older children adapted to the loss of visual signals the younger age groups did not and their communication suffered. It appears that a significant amount of information which young children transmit occurs in a non-verbal format, and that visual signals are less demanding for young listeners. Such findings have implications for professionals working with young children since they show the importance of addressing both the child's visual signals and one's own.

Relational Frame Theory (RFT) proposes that derived relational responding is crucial to the development of verbal behavior. According to RFT, typicallydeveloping children acquire the ability to derive relations through natural language interactions. In contrast, children with autism often do not acquire these skills as readily and require interventions to target their development. Limited research has examined the optimal training context for establishing the core relational skills, such as the sequence in which the relations might be optimally trained. The current research comprised three studies to investigate the emergence of specific relational responding repertoires in typicallydeveloping children and children with autism. The results demonstrate that the typicallydeveloping children had a fluent repertoire of these relational skills, while those with autism demonstrated significant deficits. The results shed some light on the possible role of training sequence.

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The first multipurpose worker project in the United States of America and the resultant development of a neighborhood multiservice center are reported on in this paper. Description of the inservice training of workers, their deployment and the significance for the sponsoring and related agencies in providing meaningful services to clients and neighborhoods is extended into some guesses about what the future holds for agencies providing well-being services.