Provides a protocol for counseling families with an autistic member concerning the risk of having an autistic child. Reports data regarding empirical recurrence risks and identifies the key elements that influence recurrence risks for individual couples. Counseling expertise in both diagnosis and treatment of autism and in the genetics of complex…

Similarities between severe learning disabilities and higher-level autism are seen to include uneven profiles, language difficulties, social and interpersonal deficits, and cognitive disorganization. Among differences are relatedness and play interests. Benefits of viewing the two conditions as overlapping on a continuum are noted. (CL)

Tourette Syndrome, a condition characterized by involuntary muscular and verbal tics, is defined, its course described, incidence noted (possibly 1.6 percent of the population), etiology considered (from viewpoints of psychogenic and organic theories), treatment (primarily pharmaceutical therapy) discussed, and educational approaches examined.…

The authors review research on attempts to promote speech acquisition in severely handicapped students. Studies on verbal imitation, syntactic forms, and semantics are summarized. Implications for instruction are noted, including careful selection of responses likely to occur in the child's normal environment and which have intrinsic reinforcing…

Problem-solving approaches to teaching pupils with autism in special schools are analyzed, discussing the structures needed by individual pupils to enable them to function as problem solvers, the value of reflection in enhancing the learning potential of pupils, and ways of increasing pupils' awareness of their own ways of handling learning…