TEACCH (Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication-handicapped Children) has grown over the past three decades from a small clinic for children to an internationally recognized treatment and support modality for individuals of all ages with autism spectrum disorders. In The TEACCH Approach to Autism Spectrum Disorders, the program’s founders and their colleagues explain its methods and philosophy based on an understanding and respect for "the culture of autism." The TEACCH program focuses on persons with autism and the development of instruction and supports based on each individual’s skills, interests, and needs. It draws from the research literature in psychology and neuropsychology to create activities and environments that are organized to emphasize meaningfulness—an approach that has proved crucial to an autistic individual’s ability to learn, comprehend, and apply learning across situations. The TEACCH Approach to Autism Spectrum Disorders explains how: - TEACCH targets critical areas in executive functioning, engagement, communication, and social skills. - Strategies can be tailored to an individual’s unique developmental and functional level. - Parents become involved in all phases of intervention as collaborators, cotherapists, and advocates. - The program can be introduced and adapted for individuals of all ages, from preschool children to adults. - Professionals can be trained in the program and its methods. This progressive program offers individuals with autism, their families, teachers, and therapists both optimism and useful strategies, without minimizing the condition or its effects. All clinicians working with people with autism will find The TEACCH Approach to Autistic Spectrum Disorders a valuable resource.

his book is the result of more than 30 years of experience and hard, T resourceful work by Eric Schopler and his team-first as lonely pioneers, now as leaders whose influence extends as far as Kuwait, India, and Japan. It is the fruit of a concept so simple, human, and obvious that it is hard to believe that not so long ago it was both revolutionary and controversial. Parents of children in mid-adulthood well remember what it was like to be considered the cause of their children's problems, rather than part of whatever solutions could be achieved. In 1971, when Eric Schopler described us as our children's "cotherapists" in the Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, it validated and strengthened the efforts we had already been making. When Division TEACCH began to develop new methods to help autistic children and-this is what was revolutionary-actually to teach them to parents, we could begin to heal. So what seems, and should seem, ordinary and matter-of-fact about this book-that it is a collection of ingenious solutions that parents have developed as responses to the continual challenges of living with autism-feels to me more like a miracle. It is not only that its nine chapters provide ingenious suggestions for dealing with the difficulties that arise in every aspect of daily life with an autistic person. Each chapter illustrates the root principle of Division TEACCH: collaboration between parents and professionals.

The state of North Carolina has had a longstanding concern and com mitment to the understanding and treatment of autistic, communications handicapped children and their families. This commitment found expres sion in the only comprehensive statewide program for families confronted with this disability, Division for the Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication handicapped CHildren (Division TEACCH). Our program staff has been privileged to respond to this commitment by developing and providing the needed services, and to engage in research informed by our clinical experience. Although many of the problems con cerning these developmentally disabled children remain to be solved, substantial progress has been made during this past decade of collabo ration among professionals, parents, and their government representa tives. The TEACCH staff has resolved to mark the effectiveness of this collaboration by holding a series of annual conferences focused on the several major issues confronting these children and their families. The conferences are held in order to bring together the best research knowl edge available to us from throughout the country, and to encourage par ticipation by the different professional disciplines and concerned parents. In addition these annual meetings form the basis for a series of books based on the conference theme. These books are, however, not merely the published proceedings of the presented papers: some chapters are expanded from conference presentations and many others were solicited from experts in the related areas of research and their service application.

As the pastPresident ofthe Israel Society forAutism, it gives me great pleasure to c- gratulate Professor Schopler and his colleagues on the publication of their new book concerning the relationship between scientific research and treatment. When we in Israel began our specifically structured education program for young children with autism, our work was based on slim to scarceknow-how andinformation, and with no experience whatsoever. Whatever information we could gather was mostly from psychological educational centers in the U.S. One of the most important and significant connections was established between the TEACCH program of North Carolina, led and conducted by the two important scholars, Professor Eric Schopler and Professor Lee Marcus, and our Israel Society for Autism. During our many encounters, seminars, and conferences, we profited enormously from all their accumulated expertise and scientific research, while perhaps it was also an important experience for them to see how a young society with very limited means was eventually shaping its educational program and arriving at some excellent results. We, ofcourse, have the highest esteem for Governor Hunt who has been following this program with so much attention and support, and we still remember his visit to Israel with distinguished representatives of the TEACCH Program. I wish the new book every success. I know it will be an enormous contribution to all those who must cope with a difficult and painful issue—autism—for whom there is no end to the need for research and continuously improving methods of care and education.

Introduction and Overview: Introduction to Early Identification and Intervention in Autism; M.M. Bristol, E. Schopler. A Parent's Perspective on the Preschool Years; R. Angell. Normal Childhood Development from Birth to Five Years; R.D. Cox. Specific Aspects of Autism: Early Social Development in Autism; C. Lord. Communication in Preschool Autistic Children; B.M. Prizant, A.M. Wetherby. Behavior Management in the Preschool Years; M.E. Van Bourgondien. Diagnostic, Assessment, and Programmatic Aspects: Assessment of the Young Autistic Child; L.M. Marcus, W.L. Stone. Medical Syndromes in Young Autistic Children; L.T. Taft. Interpreting Results to Parents of Preschool Children; V. Shea. Early Intervention for Children with Autism and Related Developmental Disorders; C. Lord, et al. Current Practices in Early Intervention for Children with Autism; J.G. Olley, et al. Federal Legislation for Young Children with Disabilities; J.E. Thiele. Index.

The North Carolina State Legislature's mandate to Division TEACCH has three major components. First, to provide the most up-to-date and cost effective services possible for families with autistic or similar language impaired children; second, to conduct research aimed toward the better under standing of such devastating disorders; and third, to provide training for the professionals needed to pursue these goals. One element in achieving these aims is to hold annual conferences on topics of special importance to the under standing and treatment of autism and similar disorders. In addition to training professionals and parents on the most recent de velopments in each conference topic, we are publishing a series, Current Issues in Autism, based on these conferences. These books are not, however, simply the published proceedings of the conference papers. Instead, some chapters are expanded conference presentations, whereas others come from national and in ternational experts whose work is beyond the scope of the conference, but es sential in our attempt at comprehensive coverage of the conference theme. These volumes are intended to provide the most current knowledge and profes sional practice available to us at the time.

The First International Leo Kanner Colloquium on Child Development, Devia tions, and Treatment explores relationships between experimental research, normal development, and interventions, with early infantile autism as a reference model of "relatively unambiguous abnormal development." Sponsored by the Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Com munications handicapped CHildren (TEACCH) Project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the colloquium tackled the challenge of facilitat ing communications among scientists of different disciplines working in a spe cialized area. The meeting proved successful in generating an interplay and information exchange among scientists of diverse academic and professional orientation, who, if not completely able to agree on common factors, did nevertheless achieve awareness and clarification of their differences. The TEACCH conference and this volume have implications for all research efforts, within and outside the domain of mental health. This is particularly so at a time of limited dollar resources for research support. The present and foresee able future represent such a time-one when communication among fields, resource competition between basic and applied research, biomedical versus psychosocial research, and the question of research utilization assume a new commanding significance. Thus the question of accountability for research has come to the fore.