In this study, four in-service teachers conducted functional assessments and developed behavior support plans, replicating Ohkubo et al. (2015) and further examining whether the behavior support plans that were developed by the participants effectively addressed the actual behavior problems their students exhibited. The results of this study showed that a procedure in which participants proceeded independently without the researcher’s direct intervention was similarly effective to the outcomes of previous studies in conducting functional assessments and developing behavior support plans for fictional cases. However, the effects on the students’ behavior problems exhibited by the students were partial, and issues remained to be addressed. The potential social validity of the study was generally highly evaluated. Finally, the contributions and limitations of this study and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) struggle to acquire deictic verbs. This study examined whether stimulus generalization to other deictic verbs could be established through the acquisition of the verbs “come/go” in a child with ASD. We set up multiple scenes in which an actor presented lines involving “come/go” with deictic gestures, including moving the upper body forward or backward, and the participating child replied with “come/go.” While performing the role, the actor sat face-to-face or side-by-side with the participant. In the intervention phase, the verbal expressions involving “come/go” and body movements based on actual directions were shaped using prompt and fading procedures. The performance of the usage of “come/go” improved in relation to the baseline phase. In addition, the performance of all deictic verbs evidently improved in the post-comprehension test relative to the pre-comprehension test. These findings have implications for training children with ASD in the use of deictic verbs.

In recent years, many studies have highlighted the importance of school education for children with emotional and mental health difficulties. In practice, there are many challenges to overcome, and it is important to clarify and resolve these issues. Thus, this study focused on the challenges of working with students with social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) difficulties by interviewing 16 Japanese teachers working with such students in special needs education schools. Based on the thematic analysis, we identified four themes that represent the perceived difficulties in teaching and the communication challenges of working with SEMH students. Specifically, the teachers faced particular challenges when interacting with students with anxiety disorders and dealing with school refusal. Meanwhile, the wide diversity of individual characteristics, even among the students with the same diagnosis, made it difficult for the teachers to identify and provide the necessary support. The implication of the findings that it is important to provide teachers with emotional support for them to gain a sense of self-efficacy.

This study examined the use of objects that evoke stereotypy as reinforcers for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The participants included three children with ASD aged 3–6 in study 1 and two children with ASD ages 6 and 7 in study 2. In study 1, the three participants displayed target behavior more in an intervention in which objects were used that evoke stereotypy as reinforcers, than in the baseline period. In study 2, involving two participants, pairing praise with using objects that evoke stereotypy in training in response to joint attention led to a more correct performance of response to joint attention. Furthermore, analysis of the occurrence of stereotypy in the intervention showed that the participants displayed more stereotypy during the reinforcement sequences than during the trial sequences. This suggests that objects that evoke stereotypy can be used as reinforcers for children with ASD.

Recent research has indicated the efficacy of the Multiple Stimuli Without Replacement Preference Assessment (MSWO) for identifying reinforcers in children with autism spectrum disorder. This study investigated the feasibility of equipping graduate students with the necessary skills to apply the MSWO via video training with remotely located participants in Saitama, Nagasaki, and Tochigi. According to the findings, following video modeling, two of the five participants exhibited a notable increase in the percentage of correctly executed steps and met the mastery criteria. Furthermore, after receiving performance feedback via video conferencing, the other three of the five participants demonstrated improved percentage of accurately completed steps and met the established mastery criteria. Overall, the social validity ratings were overwhelmingly positive, with four of five participants expressing satisfaction with the training, including the performance feedback, via video conferencing. We discuss the demonstrated effectiveness of the training for conducting preference assessments, including performance feedback via video conferencing, highlighting notable enhancements in the training process.

This study examined a sample of children with intellectual disabilities enrolled in the elementary, lower-secondary, and upper-secondary departments of a special needs education school in Japan. For this purpose, the data was collected from the children’s parents and teachers by using the Japanese version of the Short Sensory Profile (SSP), after which the parent- and teacher-reported scores were compared and the sensory characteristics of the children were analyzed. Based on the findings, the total SSP scores were significantly lower among the upper-secondary children than among the elementary and lower-secondary children, whereas the parent-reported results showed significantly higher scores than the teacher-reported results. Additionally, sensory dysfunction was not only observed in the children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but also in those without ASD. As for the parent-reported results, the total scores for the children with mild intellectual disabilities did not significantly differ from those for the children with moderate to severe disabilities. Since the analysis of the subscale scores revealed several instances of disagreement between the parents and teachers, it is essential to use both sets of SSP results in order to support children with intellectual disabilities.

This study examined the following aspects of sentence production in children with intellectual disabilities (IDs) and in children with typical development (TD): the production of active, passive, and causative sentences; the effect of focusing on noun phrases; differences in accuracy using case markers and verb morphemes; and the effect of phonological memory on each the voice. In all, 18 children with IDs (mean chronological age [CA] of 13;0 and mean mental age [MA] of 5;9) and 30 children with TD (mean CA of 5;3) participated. The results indicate that the production of passive and causative sentences was more difficult than that of active sentences for both groups. The participants’ production accuracy improved when they focused on noun phrases in active and causative sentences. The children with IDs made more verb morpheme errors than the children with TD, and phonological memory correlated with more accurate production of the passive and causative sentences. We concluded that active sentences are the easiest to produce. In addition, focusing on the noun phrases that represent actor and acted-upon was effective for active and causative senesces. The results also suggest that phonological memory is involved in the production of syntactically complex sentences.