There is debate regarding the relationship between autism and specific language impairment (SLI), with some researchers proposing aetiological overlap between the conditions and others maintaining their aetiological distinction. Although considerable research has investigated the language phenotypes of these disorders, the relationship between the…

Early detection methods for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in infancy are rapidly advancing, yet the development of interventions for infants under two years with or at-risk for ASD remains limited. In order to guide research and practice, this paper systematically reviewed studies investigating interventions for infants under 24 months with or…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of enhanced milieu teaching when combined with a voice output communication aid on the requesting skills of three children with autism. The research design was a multiple probe across participants. All sessions were conducted during 5-min play sessions in the child's classroom. All three…

Detecting early signs of autism is essential for timely diagnosis and initiation of effective interventions. Several research groups have initiated prospective studies of high-risk populations including infant siblings, to systematically collect data on early signs within a longitudinal design. Despite the potential advantages of prospective…

Studies of autism typically adopt a factorial matched-groups design aimed at eliminating nonspecific factors such as mental retardation as explanations of performance on experimental tasks. This paper reviews the issues involved in designing such studies and interpreting their results and suggests that the best approach to matching may be to…

The objective of this review is to clarify the role of matching in family genetic studies of autism as a way of defining endophenotypes for linkage analysis. The concept of a confounding variable is reviewed and the importance of considering these in family studies of three endophenotypes in autism are considered: cognitive/language impairments,…