Since 1990, the annual Research Symposium has been a highlight of the ASHA Convention. The symposium, funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, allows both clinicians and researchers to discuss current research that has important implications for the study of communication processes and disorders.

The theme of 2017’s symposium was “Advances in Autism Research: From Learning Mechanisms to Novel Interventions.” Helen Tager-Flusberg, PhD, director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence, both organized the program and served as editor for this research forum. Authors of all six presentations from the 2017 symposium contributed their papers to this forum in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (JSLHR).

This year’s research forum features review articles in four different subject areas.

  • Changing Developmental Trajectories of Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Strategies for Bridging Research to Community Practice. Amy M. Wetherby, Juliann Woods, Whitney Guthrie, Abigail Delehanty, Jennifer A. Brown, Lindee Morgan, Renee D. Holland, Christopher Schatschneider, and Catherine Lord address the national priority of community-viable, evidence-based intervention for toddlers with ASD. They identify gaps in intervention research and illustrate findings from the Early Social Interaction model.
  • SMARTer Approach to Personalizing Intervention for Children With ASD. Connie Kasari, Alexandra Sturm, and Wendy Shih introduce research methods to help personalize intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), suggesting that by looking at the diverse needs of children with ASD, we may better bridge the gap between research and practice.
  • Executive Function and Lexical Development in Children With ASD. First, Susan Ellis Weismer, Margarita Kaushanskaya, Caroline Larson, Janine Mathée, and Daniel Bolt address variables that contribute to inconsistencies in research focusing on executive function in children with ASD. Next, Sudha Arunachalam and Rhiannon J. Luyster describe key findings on lexical development in children with ASD, suggesting that readers look beyond language input.
  • Early Motor and Communication Development in ASD. Jana M. Iverson examines infants who have an older sibling with ASD to determine if early atypicalities can predict an ASD diagnosis. Then, Ahmed Abdelaziz, Sara T. Kover, Manuela Wagner, and Letitia R. Naigles look at—and attempt to understand—the absence or impairment of shape bias in children with ASD.

This exciting collection is available here, or you can explore the individual articles below.

Explore the Research Forum

Abdelaziz, A., Kover, S. T., Wagner, M., & Naigles, L. R. (2018). The shape bias in children with autism spectrum disorder: Potential sources of individual differences. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(11), 2685–2702. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-RSAUT-18-0027

Arunachalam, S., & Luyster, R. J. (2018). Lexical development in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD): How ASD may affect intake from the input. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(11), 2659–2672. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-RSAUT-18-0024

Ellis Weismer, S., Kaushanskaya, M., Larson, C., Mathée, L., & Bolt, D. (2018). Executive function skills in school-age children with autism spectrum disorder: Association with language abilities. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(11), 2641–2658. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-RSAUT-18-0026

Iverson, J. M. (2018). Early motor and communicative development in infants with an older sibling with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(11), 2673–2684. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-RSAUT-18-0035

Kasari, C., Sturm, A., & Shih, W. (2018). SMARTer approach to personalizing intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(11), 2629–2640. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-RSAUT-18-0029

Tager-Flusberg, H. (2018). Introduction to the research symposium forum. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(11), 2613–2614. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-RSAUT-18-0398

Wetherby, A. M., Woods, J., Guthrie, W., Delehanty, A., Brown, J. A., Morgan, L., . . . Lord, C. (2018). Changing developmental trajectories of toddlers with autism spectrum disorder: Strategies for bridging research to community practice. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(11), 2615–2628. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-RSAUT-18-0028