2024 Campbell Callier Prize Conference

Course Description

As infants’ motor systems develop, their exploration and learning expand in multi-faceted and multi-functional ways. Learning, while embodied, is embedded in dynamic events involving object, social, and triadic (infant, objects, people) engagement. Though subtle at first, infants use their motor systems (hands, bodies, voices, faces) to socially connect and communicate with the people in their world. For some infants, developmental processes are altered qualitatively and quantitatively, deleteriously impacting their ability to effectively elicit experiences that would help them reach their potential.  Developmental science findings on infant and young child motor and social development will be discussed.

Learning Outcomes 

Participants will be able to describe motor differences in infants at elevated likelihood for Autism.

Participants will be able to describe an early emerging form of joint attention.

Participants will be able to identify ways in which advances in early appearing foundational skills can influence change in other domains of development in caregiver behavior.

Participants will be able to describe the nature of social attention development in the social communicative development of young children.

2024 Campbell Callier Prize Recipient & Conference Speaker:

Dr. Rebecca J. Landa, PhD, CCC-SLP, BCS-CL

The Thomas F. Campbell Callier Prize in Communication Disorders recognizes individuals from around the world for their leadership in fostering scientific advances and significant developments in the diagnosis and treatment of communication disorders. Past Recipients

Presentation Title:  Convergence of Motor and Social Systems: Implications for Early Autism Intervention

Rebecca Landa, PhD, CCC-SLP, BCS-CL, is the founder and executive director of the Center for Autism Services, Science, and Innovation (previously known as CARD) at Kennedy Krieger Institute, where she is vice president. She is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Landa obtained her doctorate from the University of Washington. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Psychiatric Genetics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Landa has practiced clinically in public schools, university clinics and hospital settings. She consults with schools, universities, and families internationally to establish state-of-the-science educational and speech-language pathology programming for children with, or at risk for, communication disorders, including autism spectrum disorders. Dr. Landa takes a translational science and public health approach in her measure development, early detection, developmental science, intervention science, and implementation science research. She participates in policy-related efforts to improve health care and education for children with, or at risk for, communication disorders. She has received numerous prestigious awards, such as ASHA Honors of the Association and INSAR Fellow. Through her translational science public health initiative, Bundle of Learning®, Dr. Landa provides strategically designed, science-informed children’s books and story-related materials to improve young children’s language, emergent literacy, social, and play development and adults’ use of potent language stimulation strategies.

Disclosure:  Dr. Landa is a paid employee of the Kennedy Krieger Institute.  She has ownership interest in Bundle of Learning and has NIH grants as well as a grant through the Simonds Foundation.

Conference Speakers

Dr. Jessica Brian, PhD

Dr. Jessica Brian a clinical psychologist and senior clinician-scientist at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab (Ontario, Canada), where she co-leads the Autism Research Centre. Jessica is also Associate Professor, University of Toronto Department of Paediatrics, with affiliations at SickKids and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UofT). She specializes in neurodevelopmental disabilities with a particular interest in early identification and intervention in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Jessica has spent the last two decades collaborating in a pan-Canadian longitudinal research program that investigates the development of children at elevated likelihood for ASD (Infant Siblings Study), who are followed from infancy into adolescence. Informed by this early identification work, Jessica co-developed the Social ABCs which is a parent-mediated intervention for toddlers showing early signs of ASD or related challenges. Jessica has a long history of teaching graduate students and clinical trainees, and community providers in early detection, assessment, diagnosis, and intervention for children and youth with ASD and their families.

Disclosure:  Dr. Brian does not have any financial disclosures related to this presentation.  She co-developed the Social ABCs, which is a caregiver-mediated intervention for ASD and she co-developed the Canadian Paediatric Society practice statements on autism screening, assessment, and management.

Dr. Jana M. Iverson, PhD

Jana M. Iverson, PhD is the Christopher A. Moore Professor of Pediatric Rehabilitation and Associate Dean for Research at Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, Boston University. Her research, funded by NICHD, NIDCD, and Autism Speaks, focuses primarily on the interface between the development of early motor skills and the emergence of communication and language in neurotypical infancy and in infants with or at risk for developmental disorders.  Dr. Iverson has published a co-edited book and more than 100 articles and book chapters.  She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Child Language and Language Learning and Development.  Since 1991, she has served as an international investigator at the CNR in Rome, Italy.  Dr. Iverson is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Disclosure:  Dr. Iverson is a paid employee of Boston University and has grant funding through NIH.

Dr. Peter Mundy, PhD

Dr. Mundy is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at UC Davis and the Lisa Capps Professor of Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Education in the UC Davis Department of Psychiatry and MIND Institute. Dr. Mundy served as President of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR 2019-2021) and is currently serves as the Senior Associate Editor for Autism Research published by INSAR and Wiley Periodicals, LLC.

For the last 4 decades, Dr. Mundy has studied the roles that the development of joint attention plays in the nature, diagnosis and treatment of autism. His research has been supported by numerous extramural grants including twelve federal NIH, CD, IES and HRSA grants. Hid work on joint attention work has had a significant impact on the development of diagnostic assessments such as the Autism Diagnostic Observation Scale 2, which includes several joint attention items and nomenclature modeled from Dr. Mundy’s Early Social Communication Scales. His work has also been fundamental to the development of early intervention methods such as JASPER (Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation) developed by Dr. Connie Kasari and colleagues at UCLA. Furthermore, Dr. Mundy reported the first observations of the neural networks involved in the development of joint attention, which has informed research on developmental neuroscience for both autism and typical development. The last two decades of research on this topic has been summarized in his 2016 book, Autism and Joint Attention: Development, Neuroscience and Clinical Fundamental and a recent paper, “A review of joint attention and social-cognitive brain systems in typical development and autism spectrum disorder”, European Journal of Neuroscience, 2018, which is the first comprehensive analysis of the cognitive-neuroscience of joint attention in research and theory on autism. Most recently, Dr. Mundy’s clinical interests have begun to focus on understanding the development and treatment of autism in school-aged children. This work is born of the understanding that the development of effective preschool intervention is among the most important advances in the sciences of autism in the past 30 years. However, the full potential of that advance will only be realized if we can match our preschool efforts with a comparable science directed toward identifying and understanding the pivotal targets for interventions during the school-aged period of neurodevelopment autism. These efforts have involved the use of virtual reality to develop new methods for research with older children and a longitudinal study of the academic development, cognition and the social-communication phenotype of 8- through 16-year-old higher functioning children with ASD. The latter has focused on describing and conceptualizing problems in reading, writing and mathematics in students with ASD. This line of research suggests that the cognitive and social cognitive factors that give rise to the difficulties with learning and social communication development in preschool children with autism subsequently lead to heightened risk for learning disabilities and especially reading disability among verbal students with autism.

Disclosure:  Dr. Mundy does not have any financial or non-financial relationships to disclose.

ASHA CE Provider approval and use of the Brand Block does not imply endorsement of course content, specific products, or clinical procedures.