Mother and child speech in two half-hour free play conversations of six pairs were analysed for 15 semantic roles such as AGENT and ACTION, and five additional syntactic categories such as negation. Children were taped at the beginning of word combinations (1; 7–2; 0) and again 3 to 6 months later. Mothers and children were similar to one another in the relative frequency with which they used the different semantic and syntactic categories. However, the mothers' use was stable, including a larger number of categories than the children and showing few shifts in relative frequency. Insofar as changes took place over time, it was the children who changed to become more like their mothers, both in the semantic roles present and in their relative frequency of use. These findings are interpreted as evidence against a Fine-Tuning Hypothesis to explain the content of mothers' speech to children. The role of discourse topic restrictions in limiting the distribution of semantic roles is discussed.
Camp Campus is a 1-week campus experience for juniors or seniors in high school or high school graduates who are diagnosed with high-functioning autism, Asperger syndrome, or a related social communication disorder and who plan to attend college. Participants experience campus life by partaking of campus services, living and dining on campus, managing finances while on campus, and participating in campus recreation. In addition, instructional sessions designed to improve executive functions, theory of mind, understanding of hidden curriculum, self-reflection, self-advocacy, social relationships, and social communication are held to empower the students to address their own challenges. Examples of successes are described on the basis of post-camp surveys completed by 34 parents and students over 6 of the 7 years the camp has been offered.
The demands of initiating and maintaining social relationships and securing and holding employment commensurate with their level of education can be a life-long struggle for many adolescents and young adults with Asperger’s syndrome (AS). The purpose of the project described in this article was to pilot a service delivery model for adolescents and young adults with AS and their families that would bridge various agencies to address social-communication skills and executive functions that predict success in life settings.
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