Amy Donaldson - Autism / ASD SocialsibS Project at Portland State University

Today we welcome Dr. Amy Donaldson to Autism Empowerment Radio to talk about the SocialsibS project, a Social Communication Intervention offered through the Portland State University Autism and Child Language Disorders Research Lab and the Speech & Language Clinic. The SocialsibS project is funded by a Treatment Grant from Autism Speaks.

Social and communicative competence is central to success in school and fundamental to development of peer relationships. Social communication deficits are well documented in children with ASD. Improving these skills is often a key focus of intervention, but generalization can be challenging. Two social communication intervention methods that have been found effective in recent years include:

* Training peers, or in this case, siblings, to use strategies to facilitate the social communication of children with ASD (sibling-mediated intervention)

* Use of video-modeling to directly teach social communication skills to the child with ASD.

To increase generalization of skills, the SocialsibS project combines both of these methods in one intervention. 

The program is currently inviting children with autism spectrum disorder (ages 4 - 7) and their sibling (ages 5 - 10) for participation in the SocialsibS project at PSU.

Contact Amy: (503) 725-3224 or email: adonald@pdx.edu

Amy L. Donaldson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences at Portland State University (PSU) and Director of PSU Autism and Child Language Disorders Laboratory. Her research focuses on the assessment and intervention of social communication skills in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) within the natural environment, as well as intervention efficacy.