Chicago Children’s Clinic Research
The work of Dr. Robert Daniels, founder and executive director of the Chicago Children’s
Clinic, has been published in scholarly journals and books in psychology and psychiatry.
Dr. Daniels has received numerous awards and grants for his research studies on
autism, cooperative learning, and bipolar disorder.
The Chicago Children’s Clinic is active in the accumulation of knowledge related
to the treatment of children with neurobehavioral disorders. Current research projects
include:
- Training in Evidence-Based Pivotal Response Treatments for Children with Autism:
An Economical Method for Large Scale Dissemination
- Randomized Controlled Study of a Sleep Hygiene Intervention For Preschool Children
with Behavior Problems
- Risperidone in the Treatment of Children and Adolescents with Autistic Disorder:
A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study of Efficacy and Safety, Followed by an
Open-Label Extension Study of Safety
PRT Research and Dissemination
Growing from the body of literature from applied behavior analysis (ABA), Pivotal
Response Treatment (PRT) is an evidence-based treatment for children with autism
developed by internationally recognized researchers and clinicians at the University
of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), Drs. Robert and Lynn Koegel.
Pivotal Response
Treatment (PRT), with its emphasis on family and school involvement, targets "pivotal"
areas for treatment in natural environments. It has demonstrated outcomes that are
unmatched in the autism literature. Through PRT, 90 percent
of children who were nonverbal at age 3 learned to speak by age 5 (Koegel,
Koegel, Shoshan & McNerney, 1999; Koegel, 2000; Koegel, Koegel & Brookman,
2003).The Chicago Children's Clinic, led by Dr. Robert Daniels, was chosen to be
the first Chicago-area treatment setting to work closely and collaboratively with
UCSB to disseminate this evidence-based treatment. Several studies are currently
under way at the Chicago Children’s Clinic, which build upon the groundbreaking
work by Drs. Robert and Lynn Koegel and their colleagues.