Autism Language Therapies

Helping visual learners put words together.

"By words we learn thoughts, and by thoughts we learn life." -Jean Baptiste Girard

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Katharine Beals with her son, Jonah, at work on GrammarTrainer.

The Designer

Dr. Katharine Beals (beals@autism-language-therapies.com)

  1. mother of a deaf and autistic 9-year-old
  2. Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Chicago
  3. 5 years experience as a senior linguistic software engineer in the Natural Language Group at Unisys Corp.
  4. extensive experience in teaching and curriculum development in linguistics and English as a second language
  5. 4 years devoted to developing a systematic grammar curriculum for her autistic son
In Autism Language Therapies and the GrammarTrainer she combines expertise in English grammar, language teaching, and linguistic software design with intimate familiarity with high functioning autism.

Professional Affiliations

  1. Member, Midwest Speech Technology Association (www.midwestspeech.org)
  2. Member, Elsnet (www.elsnet.org)
  3. Member, State of Pennsylvania Autism Task Force

Autism Language Therapies also consults with Conversational Technologies (www.conversational-technologies.com).

Conferences

  1. "GrammarTrainer: a software based language intervention." Poster presentation at the annual IMFAR (International Meeting for Autism Research) Conference in London, May 16th, 2008. (Co-presenter, Felicia Hurewitz, Ph.D.).
  2. "Conventionalization in Indirect Speech Acts: Evidence from Autism." Pragmatics, Grammatical Interfaces, and Jerry Sadock Conference. Chicago, May 4th, 2008).
  3. "Improving Linguistic and Social Competence through Explicit Grammar Training." Poster presentation at the annual A.B.A. (Association for Behavioral Analysis) Conference in Boston, February 2nd, 2007. (Co-presenter, Felicia Hurewitz, Ph.D.).
  4. "Enhancing Language, Cognition, and Social Reasoning through Systematic Grammar Training", presentation, Annual Conference of the Autism Society of America, July, 2006. (Co-presenter, Felicia Hurewitz, Ph.D.).
  5. Interactive Demonstration of GrammarTrainer, poster presentation, University of Pennsylvania Autism Research Retreat, March, 2006.

Publications

  1. "Early Intervention in Deafness and Autism: One Family's Experiences, Reflections and Recommendations." Infants and Young Children, October 2004.
  2. "Autism in Daily Life: Big Challenges and Small Miracles." Mothering Magazine, www.mothering.com/small-miracles.shtml.
  3. "The Ethics of Autism: What's Wrong With the Dominant Paradigms and How to Fix Them." Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews Volume 9 Number 1, 2003.
  4. Review of Paul Bloom’s How Children Learn the Meanings of Words. In LinguistList Reviews, www.linguistlist.org.
  5. Review of Gentner & Goldin-Meadow’s Language in Mind. In LinguistList Reviews, www.linguistlist.org.
  6. oilf.blogspot.com.

Courses

  1. "Autism, Language, and Reasoning", University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.