Professional Biography

Katharine Beals received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Chicago, specializing in syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and computational linguistics. She worked for five years as a senior software engineer at the Natural Language Group at Unisys. After the birth of her autistic child, she pivoted to language acquisition in autism, cognitive differences in autism, and evidence-based therapies and instruction. In addition to teaching the Autism, Language, and Reasoning course at Penn GSE, she teaches courses on autism and language acquisition at Drexel, and courses on language, literacy, and evidence-based instruction at Temple. She is the author of several books and numerous articles on linguistic and academic interventions for students with autism and is the designer of the SentenceWeaver language program, which is in use in three autism-support classrooms in Philadelphia schools. She recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation to explore unmet needs for language teaching tools as experienced by autism parents, autistic support teachers, autism therapists, and speech and language therapists. She is a co-founder of the website FacilitatedCommunication.org.

Research Interests and Current Projects

  • Developing a Bill of Communication Rights for people with complex communication challenges
  • Combatting pseudoscience in autism language interventions
  • Investigating the efficacy of computerized grammar instruction in boosting communication skills in autism
  • Exploring large language models and writing instruction