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The purpose of this review is to broadly identify technological advances in supports and evaluation for individuals on the autism spectrum. Literature review with commentary on the evolving technologies supporting and/or evaluating social-emotional, behavioral, academic, and cognitive domains. There has been an increasing synthesis of technology within the education domain. A growing body of research has investigated the potentiality and efficacy of technological interventions, specifically in the area of support for individuals on the autism spectrum. This growth must also factor in sustainability and feasibility to be practical within the school setting. Continued research is also necessary to ensure the equity of technology supporting individuals on the autism spectrum.

Children and adolescents with autism have a higher likelihood of being exposed to bullying, abuse, and sexual assault which, through repeated exposure, has been demonstrated to impede academic, social, and physical functioning among this population. However, the complexity of unpacking the characteristics of autism and trauma can pose a challenge for school psychologists in using the most appropriate clinical method of intervention. This paper summarizes the co-occurrence of autism and trauma in an effort to better inform practitioners and recommends the need for valid and reliable assessments that measure adverse experiences for children with autism. A practitioner assessment guide of childhood trauma and autism spectrum disorder is also provided to facilitate a comprehensive assessment process. We conclude that there is a pressing need for more research examining the relationship between autism and trauma by better understanding the relationship of these constructs, and for the development of more effective assessments to provide more evidence-based interventions.

Although federal law has provided guidelines for autism eligibility for special education, school-based autism assessment and eligibility vary widely across states and identification continues to lag behind national prevalence data. The main role of the school psychologist continues to be conducting evaluations for special education eligibility, and given current barriers, some school psychologists do not feel equipped to make a recommendation for autism eligibility. This article summarizes the barriers school psychologists face when conducting autism assessments in the schools, including systemic barriers, lack of training or professional development, resulting lack of confidence, among others. We conclude by highlighting recommendations for multipronged systemic changes that will improve the capacity of special education teams and specifically support the pivotal role of the school psychologist in conducting autism eligibility evaluations in the schools.

This study sought to investigate the effects of a self-monitoring (SM) with goal-setting (GS) intervention on students' disruptive behavior. A multiple baseline A-B-BC design was implemented across five elementary school-aged participants diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to examine the use of a behavioral intervention combining SM and GS techniques to decrease disruptive behavior. The results of this study suggest that SM with GS appears to be an effective intervention package for decreasing the disruptive behavior of students with ADHD and that these behavioral decreases sustain after intervention completion. Results also suggest moderate benefits of using a SM with GS intervention over a SM intervention. Teacher ratings suggest that the SM with GS package is moderately acceptable for classroom use.

Disparity exists between racially minoritized students and their White student counterparts in academic achievement. This discrepancy engenders the difference with which students will have opportunities in advanced courses; rates of high school graduation, college acceptance, and completion rates; and salary and quality of life. The academic disparity between the two groups has been found to have roots in stereotype threat, which causes anxiety where the individual's behavior may confirm the negative stereotypes of one's in-group. Reducing stereotype threat has been theorized to allow minoritized students and those in negatively stereotyped groups to enhance their academic performance by removing levels of anxiety hampering their performance. Following previous work, whereby the academic achievement gap between Black and White middle school students were reduced, this study examines the effectiveness of such an intervention on 4th grade, elementary students' reading achievement levels., Author(s): Jisun Sunny Kim [sup.1] , Thomas J. Kehle [sup.1] , Melissa A. Bray [sup.1] , Sierra M. Trudel [sup.1] , Brenna Fitzmaurice [sup.1] , Adeline Bray [sup.1] , Marisa [...]

Students with autism have varied support needs, which may impact their safety in an emergency. Schools may want to create individualized emergency support plans for their students with autism, especially given that schools that receive public funding are required to ensure that all people, including those with disabilities, receive the benefit of emergency response planning. This article reviews the difficulties students with autism may face in an emergency and provides guidelines for assessing the support needs of students with autism that may impact them in an emergency. Specifically, it reviews assessment practices for communication, adaptive skills, sensory needs, and medical concerns as well as how needs in those areas may impact the student in an emergency. Finally, it concludes by briefly discussing how to create an individualized emergency response plan for a student based on the assessment results.

Integrated behavioral health services are becoming more commonplace, yet do not always encompass the school context. Collaborative approaches to meeting the needs of children with chronic illness are critical. For those who miss school during treatment or rehabilitation, reentry to school following extended absence can be problematic. For these students, there are unique additional challenges to consider. School reintegration programs as a component of behavioral health may benefit not only the child with chronic illness but also their peers and school personnel. The existing research is reviewed here along with the implications and the need for additional research to establish most effective approaches.

This study is a multi-component Positive Psychology Intervention (PPI) with the goal of improving daily happiness and classroom behavior in a sample at-risk high-school students. PPIs have increasingly been used in school settings to enhance student well-being, student success, and to increase positive affect. The current study utilized a multiple baseline design, across five adolescents, to examine whether a manualized PPI implemented in individual school-based counseling sessions with at-risk high-school students, would lead to increased happiness, improved classroom behavior, and life satisfaction, measured through a Daily Happiness survey, the Direct Behavior Rating (DBR), General Happiness Scale, Brief Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale, and the Student Life Satisfaction Scale. Results demonstrated high variability in the data and an overall null effect of the intervention on the two dependent variables of daily happiness and classroom behavior. Limitations included individual impacts of outside factors on student reports and behavior. Due to the small scale of the study and lack of observed intervention effects, more research is needed to draw conclusions about the application of the intervention. However, social validity data revealed that school-based mental health professionals may still consider this intervention to teach students strategies to improve life satisfaction.

The present pilot study employed an experimental design to examine the efficacy of a self-distancing intervention for promoting adolescent's reflective adaptation to anger inducing events. Recent experimental studies on college students, elementary school students, and couples have found that self-distancing interventions, as compared to self-immersion/reflection interventions or a no-treatment control, lead to adaptive responses to anger and reductions in future aggression. As adolescents are particularly prone to intense experiences of anger and are at high-risk of being perpetrators and victims of aggression, examining the potential of self-distancing to reduce anger has important implications for adults serving this population. However, contrary to the results of the literature examining self-distancing in adult and child populations, self-distancing was not found to reduce, and may have increased, implicit aggressive cognition, anger, and negative affect in the adolescent sample.

The focus on college students' mental and physical health is steadily increasing with more students reporting concern and need for services. This study investigates the results of college students' utilization of mind–body health activities and services in the wake of COVID-19. As part of a larger research study on college wellbeing, a survey completed by 557 college students between May and August of 2020 assessed student's use of mind–body health strategies. To examine differences in mind–body health (MBH) service and activity usage before and during COVID-19 campus closures, paired t-tests were used, while one-way ANOVAs were used to determine differences based on demographic variables. Findings across MBH service and activity use during campus closures were variable, with use differing based on a variety of factors including gender, socioeconomic background, age, and race, as well as the participant's personal prior history of services. These findings provide insight into what services students accessed during the lockdown period to aid university health systems with recommended guidance and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conoley, Powers, and Gutkin (2020) called for an increased emphasis on models of psychological service delivery that are primarily indirect, adult-focused, and geared toward systems-level change in the schools. They asserted that research in school psychology should not focus on the problems of individual children and youth but address the "powerful ecosystems" that surround them. Although school- and system-wide interventions are certainly important and can have a positive impact on student outcomes, we contend that biopsychosocial models of human development that integrate the effects of genetics, personal characteristics and behaviors, environments, and broad social contexts are better frameworks for guiding future research in school psychology. In these models, the role of genetics is mediated by the family environment and broader social contexts to influence variability in cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioral domains of psychological functioning. These individual differences then interact with specific situations, leading to outcomes in educationally relevant behaviors, such as achievement, self-esteem, motivation, and peer relations. The focus of research in school psychology, therefore, should not be on "1 size fits all" school-wide interventions but rather on understanding how and why children and youth differ from one another and on translating research on the effects of genes, the environment, and their interplay into effective educational interventions. Research on bullying and victimization in schools is discussed as an example of the importance of taking a biopsychosocial ecological approach to studying complex behavior.