Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

The purpose of this project is to build understanding of associations between specific social experiences at school and academic outcomes among adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Most students with ASD spend a significant amount of their school day in a general education setting, and there is a pressing need to understand how to promote positive education outcomes in these settings. Compared to their typically developing peers, adolescents with ASD are less likely to report enj...

The purpose of this project is to adapt and test a school-based executive functioning (EF) and study skills intervention, Teaching Academic Skills to Kids-School-based (TASK-S), for high-functioning middle school students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Youth with ASD experience significant academic problems in a variety of domains including writing, attention, and complex processing related to problem solving, numerical operations, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension. A...

The purpose of this project was to examine the academic and socio-emotional problems experienced by children with and without elevated sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) symptoms. SCT refers to a specific set of attentional symptoms, including excessive daydreaming, mental confusion, seeming to be "in a fog," and slowed thinking or behavior. It is a unique pattern of attentional difficulties that are not captured by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study found that SCT can b...

Longitudinal Evaluation of Sluggish Cognitive Tempo: Identifying Mechanisms of Educational Impairment

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most commonly diagnosed childhood disorders with a prevalence rate estimated at 8%. Children with ADHD often have difficulty with school-related tasks and activities such as completing or turning in homework, planning for long-term assignments, studying for tests, and keeping class materials and papers organized. These organizational and temporal difficulties become particularly problematic with the increased demands of middle sch...