ASD (autism spectrum disorders) involve an impairment of normal social interaction and communication, is often associated with repetitive behavior and restricted interests, and knows no racial, geographic, religious or socioeconomic boundaries. Although researchers continue to search for a cause or causes of ASD (Hill & Frith, 2003; Salmond, de Haan, Friston, Gadian, & Vargha-Khadem, 2003; Tager-Flusberg & Joseph, 2003), increasing numbers of children with ASD are being placed in preschool special education programs, general education inclusive classrooms, or self-contained special education classrooms. In these settings, depending on their needs, they receive speech-language and education services. However, research to date has not shown that any one intervention method is more effective than any other. What has been suggested is that the most effective interventions are eclectic or multimodal and require a collaborative approach by speech-language pathologists, teachers, parents, and other key school personnel.

In this issue, we include a variety of interventions that have been implemented across a broad range of ages from preschoolers to young adults and across a broad range of settings from preschool to residential placement. The articles by Sima Gerber and Sylvia Farnsworth Diehl both emphasize the importance of assessment to the intervention process and how valuable working collaboratively with key stake holders can be to this process. Both of these articles are framed from a developmental perspective and seek to determine functional or communicative intent of a child's verbal or nonverbal behaviors. Having presented an assessment from this view, both articles present intervention strategies in the context of illustrative vignettes. In this way, the interventions discussed become more accessible for the reader and hopefully more readily adopted in the reader's own setting.

With the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, P.L. 105-17 in 1997, local school districts have had to take on the challenge of including students with varying degrees of ASD in general education classrooms. The article by Simpson, deBoer-Ott, and Myles present an ASD Inclusion Collaboration Model, which offers teacher and clinicians specific checklists of how to accomplish critical tasks when teaching children with ASD in inclusive classrooms. Here again, the word "collaboration" is key to successful inclusion.

Any volume on interventions for ASD would be incomplete without submissions that use applied behavior analysis techniques (ABA) to effect improvement in functional communication. In the Koegel, Carter, and Koegel article, two children with autism who lacked temporal morphemes were taught a self-initiated query process to acquire the targeted structures. Not only did this response generalize for both children, but also the self-initiation query procedure resulted in other language gains, highlighting the potential value of this protocol. Similarly, in the Polirstok, Dana, Buono, Mongelli, and Trubia article, a quasi-ABA technique called gentle teaching was employed with young adults with severe autism in a residential setting. Results included an increase in functional communication with a concomitant reduction in maladaptive behavior. Both the Polirstok et al. and Koegel et al. articles suggest the role ABA techniques can play in treating children and young adults with ASD.

One ASD disorder that has been receiving a great deal of attention over the last few years, substantially because of the increase in reported incidence, is Asperger syndrome (AS) (Scott, Baron-Cohen, Bolton, & Braine, 2002). The article by Safran, Safran, and Ellis provides an overview of screening and diagnostic procedures for AS, and offers teachers and clinicians important intervention strategies for the classroom that are referred to as the ABCs- interventions that address Academics, Behavior, and Communication.

In keeping with the theme of this volume, "Broad-based Clinical and Educational Interventions," Polirstok and Lesser have compiled an on-line bibliography of information, resources and interventions. Speech-language pathologists and teachers may wish to share this information with parents and other professionals who provide services to children with ASD.

Our understanding of ASD has come a long way since it was believed that responsibility for ASD rests with cold unloving mothers ("refrigerator moms"). As researchers continue to search for genetic, biological, and neurological factors that affect ASD, (Kjelgaard & Tager-Flusberg, 2001; Ring et al., 1999) clinicians and educators "toil in the fields" seeking strategies for best practice interventions. We hope this issue fulfills this need.

REFERENCES