Promoting the Use at Home of Behavior Management Skills by Parents of Autistic Children

As a group, children and youth with autism are the most at-risk population in the United States today (Warren, 1980)0 With an inci-dence for severe autism of 5 in 10,000 and more like 20 in 10,000 individuals affected by the broader category of pervasive developmen-tal disorders, autism is about as common as blindness but not nearly as well understood or treated. In reality, the term autism is only a label which refers not to a discrete, singular disorder but to a set of clinical factqrs, behaviors and syrnptoms ~ The autistic syndromes (Coleman and Gillberg, 1985) are characterized by lack of responsive-ness to other people, objects and events; disturbances of speech, language, cognition and nonverhal communication; bizarre responses to the environment, such as resistance to change, or peculiar interests in or attachments to objects; disturbed responses to sensory stimllli, both overreacting and underreacting; and disturbed developmental rates and sequences in motor, social and cognitive skills