This study investigated vicarious effort-based decision-making in 50 adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compared to 32 controls using the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task. Participants made choices to win money for themselves or for another person. When choosing for themselves, the ASD group exhibited relatively similar patterns…

Peer influence has a profound impact on decision-making in typically developing adolescents. In this study, we examined to what extent adolescent males (age 11-17 years; N = 144) with and without autism (ASD) were influenced by peer feedback on prosocial behavior, and which factors were related to individual differences in peer feedback…

Both autism spectrum (ASD) and anxiety disorders are associated with atypical neural and attentional responses to emotional faces, differing in affective face processing from typically developing peers. Within a longitudinal study of children with ASD (23 male, 3 female), we hypothesized that early ERPs to emotional faces would predict concurrent…

Numerous studies investigated executive functioning (EF) problems in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) using laboratory EF tasks. As laboratory task performances often differ from real life observations, the current study focused on EF in everyday life of 118 children and adolescents with ASD (6-18 years). We investigated age-related and…

Reading comprehension is an area of difficulty for many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). According to the Simple View of Reading, word recognition and oral language are both important determinants of reading comprehension ability. We provide a novel test of this model in 100 adolescents with ASD of varying intellectual ability.…

We analyzed several studies of non-verbal communication (prosody and facial expressions) completed in our lab and conducted a secondary analysis to compare performance on receptive vs. expressive tasks by adolescents with ASD and their typically developing peers. Results show a significant between-group difference for the aggregate score of…

Similar to a handbook in its comprehensive description of the theory and research supporting current practices in the treatment of autism spectrum disorders, this interdisciplinary text shows how the existing knowledge base can be used to explore promising new possibilities related to the field's many unanswered questions. This book is appropriate…

A local processing bias, referred to as "weak central coherence," has been postulated to underlie key aspects of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Little research has examined whether individual differences in this cognitive style can be found in typical development, independent of intelligence, and how local processing relates to executive control.…

It has been hypothesised that auditory processing may be enhanced in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We tested auditory discrimination ability in 72 adolescents with ASD (39 childhood autism; 33 other ASD) and 57 IQ and age-matched controls, assessing their capacity for successful discrimination of the frequency, intensity and duration…

This review of 20 years of developmental research on Executive Functions (EF) offers a broad-brushstroke picture that touches on multiple issues including: (i) findings from typical and atypical groups, from infancy to adolescence; (ii) advances in assessment tools and in statistical analysis; (iii) the interplay between EF and other cognitive…

Background: We examined performance on a self-referenced memory (SRM) task for higher-functioning children with autism (HFA) and a matched comparison group. SRM performance was examined in relation to symptom severity and social cognitive tests of mentalizing. Method: Sixty-two children (31 HFA, 31 comparison; 8-16 years) completed a SRM task in…

Despite the advances in understanding cognitive improvements in executive function in adolescence, much less is known about the influence of affective and social modulators on executive function and the biological underpinnings of these functions and sensitivities. Here, recent behavioral and neuroscientific studies are summarized that have used…

This study examined the effect of exemplar typicality on reaction time and accuracy of categorization. High-functioning children (age 9-12), adolescents (age 13-16), and adults with autism (age 17-48) and matched controls were tested in a category verification procedure. All groups showed improved processing throughout the lifespan for typical and…

Sign language production of 14 low-functioning students (ages 9 to 20) with autistic disorder were examined. The location aspect of signs was produced more accurately by subjects than either the handshape or movement aspects. Wide individual differences were observed. Sign vocabulary size and accuracy was correlated with performance on two…