2026-09-23T03:38:31Z https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/109485 2023-07-11 col_2142_5131 col_2142_8800 com_2142_5130 com_2142_5132

Xia, Yan Meadan-Kaplansky, Hedda Ostrosky, Michaelene M McBride, Brent A Cheung, W. Catherine 2021-03-05T21:40:41Z 2021-03-05T21:40:41Z 2023-03-05T21:43:00Z 2020-10-22 2020-12 Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is one of the most prominent and widely recognized condition. The prevalence has increased drastically to 1 in 54 children, and with students demonstrating the largest increase. Many students with ASD in elementary and middle schools have difficulties engaging with their classroom environments and forming friendships (Mendelson et al., 2016). Such difficulties are mostly affected by deficits or delays in social and communication skills. Neuroscience researchers have established clear links between social, communication, and motor skills (Hellendoorn et al., 2015). However, there is limited research examining the correlation among social, communication, and motor skills of students in elementary and middle schools, in general, and of students with ASD specifically. Additionally, to date no attempts have been made to explore the mediating role of motor skills between social and communication skills. Data on students with ASD from the Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study (SEELS, 2000) data set were analyzed to explore these gaps in the literature. This study utilized an autoregressive model based on structural equational modeling (SEM). Descriptive and SEM analyses were conducted using R 3.0.1. Results show that (a) motor skills mediate the relation between communication and social skills in elementary school, but not in middle school, (b) communication, motor, and social skills at T1 (i.e., elementary school; mean age 8 years) demonstrate a significant contribution to the same skills at T2 (elementary school; mean age 9 years), but skills at T2 are not a significant contributor to the corresponding skills at T3 (i.e., middle school; mean age 11 years), and (c) there are no significant longitudinal relations among communication, motor, and social skills between T2 and T3. These findings indicate that increased motor skills may result in improvements in social skills for students with ASD in elementary school. Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2022-12-01 The student, W. Catherine Cheung, accepted the attached license on 2020-10-21 at 10:57. The student, W. Catherine Cheung, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2020-10-21 at 11:07. This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2020-10-22 at 17:26. DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #15845 on 2021-03-04 at 16:19:23 Made available in DSpace on 2021-03-05T21:40:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 CHEUNG-DISSERTATION-2020.pdf: 1561397 bytes, checksum: 0232ab983d5e31e44743a9e2d5cbfa97 (MD5) LICENSE.txt: 4216 bytes, checksum: b329dbd5378c3be1ff16c744af12151c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2020-10-22 Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 117189 Lift date: 2023-03-05T21:40:52Z Reason: Author requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD system Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 117189 Lift date: 2023-03-05T21:43:00Z Reason: Author requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD system Author requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD system U of I Only application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109485 en NA autism motor social communication SEELS A longitudinal analysis of the relations between social, communication, and motor skills among students with autism text Thesis Special Education Special Education University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dissertation Ph.D.