Sensory-based intervention is a common approach used to address behavioral problems in children. Types of sensory-based intervention for children and details of the intervention effectiveness have not been systematically examined. This review examined the effectiveness and ideal types of sensory-based interventions for children with behavioral…

We compared judgements of the simultaneity or asynchrony of visual stimuli in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and typically-developing controls using Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Two vertical bars were presented simultaneously or non-simultaneously with two different stimulus onset delays. Participants with ASD distinguished…

People with autism show superior performance to controls on the Embedded Figures Test (EFT). However, studies examining the relationship between autistic-like traits and EFT performance in neurotypical individuals have yielded inconsistent findings. To examine the inconsistency, a meta-analysis was conducted of studies that (a) compared high and…

Current views suggest that autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are characterised by enhanced low-level auditory discrimination abilities. Little is known, however, about whether enhanced abilities are universal in ASD and how they relate to symptomatology. We tested auditory discrimination for intensity, frequency and duration in 21 adults with ASD…

Biological motion is easily perceived by neurotypical observers when encoded in point-light displays. Some but not all relevant research shows significant deficits in biological motion perception among those with ASD, especially with respect to emotional displays. We tested adults with and without ASD on the perception of masked biological motion…

This study aimed to investigate the development of audiovisual integration in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Audiovisual integration was measured using the McGurk effect in children with ASD aged 7-16 years and typically developing children (control group) matched approximately for age, sex, nonverbal ability and verbal ability.…

Functional handwriting involves complex interactions among physical, cognitive and sensory systems. Impairments in many aspects of these systems are associated with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD), suggesting a heightened risk of handwriting difficulties in children with ASD. This scoping review aimed to: (1) survey the existing evidence about…

We analyze the hypothesis that some individuals on the autism spectrum may use visual mental representations and processes to perform certain tasks that typically developing individuals perform verbally. We present a framework for interpreting empirical evidence related to this "Thinking in Pictures" hypothesis and then provide…

Past research has focused on pretend play in infants with autism because it is considered an early manifestation of symbolic or imaginative thinking. Contradictory research findings have challenged the meta-representational model. The intent of this paper is to propose that pretend play is the behavioral manifestation of developing imaginative…

We examined social attention and attention shifting during (a) a play interaction between 12-month olds and an examiner and (b) after the examiner pretended to hurt herself. We coded the target and duration of infants' visual fixations and frequency of attention shifts. Siblings of children with autism and controls with no family history of autism…

Key theories of autism implicate orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) compromise, while olfactory identification (OI) deficits are associated with OFC dysfunction. This study aimed to complete a 5-year follow-up of children with high-functioning autism (HFA) who previously lacked the normal age-OI association; and compare unirhinal-OI in children with HFA,…

We have previously described (see companion paper, this issue) the utility of using perceptual signatures for defining and dissociating condition-specific neural functioning underlying early visual processes in autism and FXS. These perceptually-driven hypotheses are based on differential performance evidenced only at the earliest stages of visual…

In a sample of 46 children aged 4-7 years with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and intelligible speech, there was no statistical support for the hypothesis of concomitant Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). Perceptual and acoustic measures of participants' speech, prosody, and voice were compared with data from 40 typically-developing children, 13…

Results from functional imaging studies are often still interpreted using the classical architectonic brain maps of Brodmann and his successors. One obvious weakness in traditional, architectural mapping is the subjective nature of localizing borders between cortical areas by means of a purely visual, microscopical examination of histological…

We investigated perception of social and physical causality and animacy in simple motion events, for high-functioning children with autism (CA = 13, VMA = 9.6). Children matched 14 different animations to pictures showing physical, social or non-causality. In contrast to previous work, children with autism performed at a high level similar to…