The Latest Research in One Book

The theme of this year's TEACCH conference, which we were attending as a vendor for most of last week, was Current Research Advances in Autism. Amy Wetherby was one of the featured speakers, and she also happens to be one of the contributors to the recent book Social & Communication Development in Autism Spectrum Disorders. Though we've actually had the book in stock since January, I wanted to highlight it now, because it is so relevant. Not to mention an excellent collection of chapters by leading researchers in the field.

The chapters are divided into four main sections: Assessment and Diagnosis; Screening and Surveillance; Evidence-Based Interventions; and Developmental and Neurobiological Issues. If you look at our full bookstore description, you can see who wrote what for which sections. Besides Amy Wetherby, authors include the co-editors Tony Charman and Wendy Stone, Simon Baron-Cohen, Catherine Lord, Pamela Wolfberg, Patricia Howlin, and many, many others. I have to admit, it took me a long time to read the whole book in order to write the description, because it is so full of information. The chapters offer great overviews of the state of current research in early diagnostic and screening procedures, early intervention, intervention methods in general, and what we actually know about social communication development and its neurological basis. They also cover some of the key issues researchers in the autism field must take into account when structuring new research studies.

Being on the inside track here at the bookstore, I admit I gave a copy of this book to my mother for Christmas, before we even had it up on the website, because I knew she'd find it useful for teaching her class on autism research. She says she's found it very useful, and also reports that when her colleagues discovered it in the vendor room at IMFAR last month, they ended up with so many extra copies amongst members of their department, they had to return some of them. (We weren't there, so I don't know who they bought them from; probably the publisher. Clearly, I think you should buy them from us. All of our sales go directly back to autism services, after all!)

Anyway, if you are at all interested in autism research, I highly recommend this book. There is far too much information in it for me to synthesize it all here, but I assure you, it's all exceedingly well-written.

If what you need is a book that focuses more on research-based direct care practices, though, see the entry below and check out Growing Up with Autism: Working with School-Age Children and Adolescents.