A recent study suggests that parent report on the Social Symptom and Prosocial scales of the Childhood Joint Attention Rating Scale provides useful information about differences in the social development of school-aged autistic children. The current study provides additional psychometric data on the Childhood Joint Attention Rating Scale regarding…

Increasing evidence highlights the role of disrupted circadian rhythms in the neural dysfunctions and sleep disturbances observed in autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. However, the causality and directionality of these associations remain unclear. In this study, we employed a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian…

Compared to their neurotypically developing peers, children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders tend to have attenuated neural responses in the parietal lobe when attending sensory input, as reflected by a reduced P3b amplitude measured with electroencephalography. However, it is unknown whether a reduced P3b amplitude in autistic…

Children with autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more likely than neurotypical children to experience eating difficulties, such as picky/selective eating, slow eating, and over/under-eating. Recent studies show that eating difficulties can persist into adulthood for autistic individuals. Yet little is known about the…

This systematic literature review was conducted to examine the most studied neurodevelopmental disorders reported in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and explore public knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Electronic literature databases such as PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, CINAHL, and Google Scholar from May 2010 to May 2022. The literature…

The physiological functions of micronutrients in neurodevelopment are well documented, but their protective effects on neurodevelopmental disorders remain controversial. We assessed the associations between micronutrients and three main neurodevelopmental disorders, that is, autism spectrum disorder (18,381 cases), attention-deficit/hyperactivity…

Autistic people often experience difficulties navigating face-to-face social interactions. Historically, the empirical literature has characterised these difficulties as cognitive 'deficits' in social information processing. However, the empirical basis for such claims is lacking, with most studies failing to capture the complexity of social…

Shared family meals are associated with family functioning and thought to protect against disordered eating in families with neurotypical children. Limited research, however, has examined the mealtime structure or experience in families with children with autism (Autism spectrum condition) and/or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, despite…

Mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, aggression, and inattention are common in autistic youth and are challenging to treat by community providers. We aim to parse the heterogeneity of autism based on dimensions of executive function and determine whether specific executive function profiles are differentially related to…

While overt social atypicalities remain a key component of the autistic phenotype, recent reframing of autistic social motivation suggests that these atypicalities do not overlap with their actual level of social engagement. Our study aimed to investigate autistic preschoolers' visual attention toward social situations with unequal interactive…

Social skills group training is frequently used to support autistic children and adolescents in coping with everyday social demands and expectations. Meta-analytic studies suggest small to medium effect sizes. Effect moderators must be better understood to inform implementation and allow optimization of intervention protocols. Using data from two…

Sleep problems are prevalent in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and have a range of causes, including circadian rhythm misalignment. However, little is known about sleep in autistic children with co-occurring attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A cross-sectional descriptive and analytic study was conducted in 87 autistic children and…

Research consistently shows that autistic adults do not attend to faces as much as non-autistic adults. However, this conclusion is largely based on studies using pre-recorded videos or photographs as stimuli. In studies using real social scenarios, the evidence is not as clear. To explore the extent to which differences in findings relate to…

In the present study, we sought to examine whether face recognition problems impact the social anxiety experienced by autistic people. Many autistic people -- perhaps between 15% and 30% -- exhibit severe face recognition problems that closely resemble developmental prosopagnosia. At present, however, little is known about the psychosocial…

Being looked at is an important communicative signal, and attenuated responses to such direct gaze have been suggested as an early sign of autism. Using live eye tracking, we examined whether direct gaze elicits different gaze responses in infants at ages 10, 14 and 18 months with and without later autism in real-life interaction. The sample…