National Autism Indicators Report: Transition into Young Adulthood

There is very little research published concerning how people with autism do in the adult portion of their lifespans. We analyzed data from "The National Longitudinal Transition Study-2" and "The Survey of Pathways to Diagnosis and Services" to examine the service needs and life outcomes of adolescents and young adults on the autism spectrum. This report describes the prevalence of a wide variety of indicators related to transition planning, services access, unmet needs, employment, postsecondary education, living arrangements, social participation, and safety and risk

The Experiences of Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders in College: A Heuristic Exploration

This inquiry was conducted to describe the experience of individuals with autism spectrum disorders who have experienced the higher education system. All participants have been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and experienced some aspect of the higher education system. Data was collected using primarily face to face interviews. The data was then analyzed using the heuristic methodology of Dr. Clark Moustakas (1990). Ultimately, many patterns and themes emerged from this analysis, culminating in a creative synthesis which sums up the experience. The themes showed the highs and lows of being a college student coupled with the experience of having a developmental disorder as an adult. The final creative synthesis focuses on the life altering changes that occur during the course of the higher education experience for students with autism spectrum disorders

Affective Medicine: a review of Affective Computing efforts in Medical Informatics

Background: Affective computing (AC) is concerned with emotional interactions performed with and through computers. It is defined as “computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions”. AC enables investigation and understanding of the relation between human emotions and health as well as application of assistive and useful technologies in the medical domain. Objectives: 1) To review the general state of the art in AC and its applications in medicine, and 2) to establish synergies between the research communities of AC and medical informatics. Methods: Aspects related to the human affective state as a determinant of the human health are discussed, coupled with an illustration of significant AC research and related literature output. Moreover, affective communication channels are described and their range of application fields is explored through illustrative examples. Results: The presented conferences, European research projects and research publications illustrate the recent increase of interest in the AC area by the medical community. Tele-home healthcare, AmI, ubiquitous monitoring, e-learning and virtual communities with emotionally expressive characters for elderly or impaired people are few areas where the potential of AC has been realized and applications have emerged. Conclusions: A number of gaps can potentially be overcome through the synergy of AC and medical informatics. The application of AC technologies parallels the advancement of the existing state of the art and the introduction of new methods. The amount of work and projects reviewed in this paper witness an ambitious and optimistic synergetic future of the affective medicine field

Moving Toward a Culture of Evidence: Documentation and Action Research inside CAPE Veteran Partnerships

This report is a culmination of three years of study of the impact on effective teaching of educators and artists engaging as partners in action research (inquiry based study of their own practice), in documenting the effects of arts integration on student learning (creating a "culture of evidence"), and in collaborating with other action research teams and with formal researchers to actively investigate qualities of teaching and learning at participating schools (what CAPE calls "layered research")

Art Therapy And Autism: Listening To Voices And Critiquing Art Therapy Through Materials And Processes

Autistic people are not being asked about their experiences, perceptions, thoughts, or opinions. There is a discrepancy between what researchers of art therapy are accounting for, and what autistic individuals express through experience. While art has meaningful benefits for all learners, especially autistic people, individuals receiving art therapy oftentimes do not authentically benefit from art therapy in the ways that researchers describe. Using collections of writings and art by autistic individuals, their personal accounts and experiences are placed in conversation with current research on art therapy with autistic individuals. Emphasizing material usage serves the purpose of grounding art therapy in the artmaking process. Because of the current dominance of the medical model and pathology paradigm, art therapists are attempting to treat symptoms of ASD, commonly through the use of Applied Behavior Analysis therapy, which has caused trauma to countless individuals on the autism spectrum. Shifting towards the neurodiversity paradigm would recognize and respect diverse minds and ways of being as valuable. Proposed is a call for a paradigm shift from the pathology paradigm towards the neurodiversity paradigm. Further research on the subject of art therapy and autistic individuals must prioritize the voices, opinions, and experiences of people with ASD

Building information modelling (BIM) implementation and remote construction projects: issues, challenges, and critiques.

The construction industry has been facing a paradigm shift to (i) increase productivity, efficiency, infrastructure value; quality and sustainability (ii) reduce lifecycle costs, lead times and duplications via effective collaboration and communication of stakeholders in construction projects. This paradigm shift is becoming more critical with remote construction projects, which reveals unique and even more complicated challenging problems in relation to communication and management due to the remoteness of the construction sites. On the other hand, Building Informational Modelling (BIM) is offered by some as the panacea to addressing the interdisciplinary inefficiencies in construction projects. Although in many cases the adoption of BIM has numerous potential benefits, it also raises interesting challenges with regards to how BIM integrates the business processes of individual practices. This paper aims to show how BIM adoption for an architectural company helps to mitigate the management and communication problems in remote construction project. The paper adopts a case study methodology, which is a UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project of BIM adoption between the University of Salford, UK and John McCall Architects (JMA), in which the BIM use between the architectural company and the main contractor for a remote construction project is elaborated and justified. Research showed that the key management and communication problems such as poor quality of construction works, unavailability of materials, and ineffective planning and scheduling can largely be mitigated by adopting BIM at the design stage

Subgrouping the autism "spectrum": reflections on DSM-5

DSM-5 has moved autism from the level of subgroups ("apples and oranges") to the prototypical level ("fruit"). But making progress in research, and ultimately improving clinical practice, will require identifying subgroups within the autism spectrum