The Latest Resources for World Autism Month

As an ASHA member, you play an important role in helping individuals with autism communicate. To celebrate World Autism Month, we’re highlighting articles from across ASHA’s journals that can help you do just that!

In the past year, we’ve published dozens of articles containing information for clinicians and researchers working with people with autism. Check out the articles (one from each of ASHA’s five journals) below.

Working With Children and Young Adults With Autism

Social Communication and Parent Verbal Responsiveness Across Interaction Contexts in Toddlers on the Autism Spectrum: Toddlers acquire social communication and language skills through day-to-day interactions with their caregivers. The authors explored how children with autism, children with developmental delays, and typically developing children communicated with their caregivers, finding patterns across all three groups.

Impact of an Auditory Processing Training Program on Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Learn how a 12-week course can help individuals with autism who have significant auditory processing difficulties. After the sessions were complete, participants showed significant improvements in all test measures, including hearing speech in noise.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication Assessment for Children on the Autism Spectrum: Protocol Development and Content Validation: Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) can help individuals with autism communicate, but findings show that many SLPs lack confidence in conducting AAC evaluations. This article provides a protocol that school-based SLPs can use to guide their clinical decision making during AAC assessments.

Reading and Spelling in Children With Autism

The Relation of Linguistic Awareness Skills to Reading and Spelling for Autistic and Non-Autistic Elementary School–Age Children: In this article, the authors aimed to determine the linguistic awareness of autistic elementary school children. They found that linguistic awareness skills are often less developed than other skills, even though such skills are important for successful reading and spelling.

Accessible Literacy for Emerging Communicators: A Proposed Model and Case Application With Children on the Autism Spectrum: Language and word reading instruction may not be accessible for children with autism who are still building consistent and effective forms of communication. Learn how the use of universal design for learning (UDL) guidelines can help create new learning opportunities for these emerging communicators.

World Autism Month and Beyond

These articles are just a small sample of the resources that we publish every year for ASHA members working with the millions of Americans who have autism. For more articles, check out our previous coverage of autism awareness days below, or browse our Autism Spectrum Topic Page containing nearly 2,000 articles.

We honor the invaluable contributions of ASHA members who work with people with autism—both during World Autism Month and beyond! We hope that you’ll take the opportunity this April to share your dedication and advocacy.