Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute

A major premise of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part C program is that early intervention builds and strengthens family capacity. This, in turn, has positive effects on parent and child outcomes. The aim of this study is to examine this premise by identifying the relationships between certain intervention characteristics and parent and child outcomes. These characteristics include program variables, such as service intensity and frequency of parent contacts, as well...

Young children with profound developmental delays often do not draw associations between their actions and the resulting effects. Young children gain understanding of the relationship between their behavior and its consequences through response-contingent learning opportunities. These learning opportunities involve the use of a targeted behavior to produce interesting social or nonsocial responses. Understanding these associations is a building block for future adaptive behaviors, and it is ...