Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) struggle to develop appropriate social skills, which can lead to later social rejection, isolation, and mental health concerns. Educators play an important role in supporting and monitoring social skills development for children with ASD, but the tools used by educators are often tedious, lack suitable…

The severity of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often measured by co-occurring conditions, such as intellectual disability or language delay, rather than deficits in social interaction, and restricted interests and repetitive behaviors. The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule calibrated severity score (ADOS CSS) was created to facilitate…

One of the earliest indicators of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is delay in language and social communication. Despite consensus on the benefits of earlier diagnosis and intervention, our understanding of the language growth of children with ASD during the first years of life remains limited. Therefore, this study compared communication growth…

Audio-visual recording and location tracking produce enormous quantities of digital data with which researchers can document children's everyday interactions in naturalistic settings and assessment contexts. Machine learning and other computational approaches can produce replicable, automated measurements of these big behavioral data. The…

Although electrophysiological (electroencephalography) measures of executive functions (e.g. error monitoring) have been used to predict academic achievement in typically developing children, work investigating a link between error monitoring and academic skills in children with autism spectrum disorder is limited. In this study, we employed…

Repetitive behaviors are observed in autism spectrum disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Clinically, obsessive-compulsive disorder obsessions are thought to drive repetitive or ritualistic behavior designed to neutralize subjective distress, while restricted and repetitive behaviors are theorized to be reward- or sensory-driven. Both…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display differences in multisensory function as quantified by several different measures. This study estimated the stability of variables derived from commonly used measures of multisensory function in school-aged children with ASD. Participants completed: a simultaneity judgment task for audiovisual…

This study was a replication of Mazefsky et al.'s ("Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities" 43:1236-1242, 2013) investigation among a sample of 45 high ability children and adolescents diagnosed with ASD under DSM-IV-TR. Items from the ADOS and ADI-R were mapped onto DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for ASD and SCD to determine…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether scoring of the gestures point, give, and show were correlated across measurement tools used to assess gesture production in children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Method: Seventy-eight children with ASD between the ages of 23 and 37 months participated. Correlational analyses…

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by a series of deficits in social interaction and communication and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped behavior patterns. In addition, a high percentage of ADS is associated with anxiety disorders. The goal of this study is to assess the perception of anxiety in a group of children and…

The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) is currently being used in clinical and genetic studies of autism as both a screener and as a quantitative measure of autistic traits. This article assesses the influence of nonspecific factors on SRS scores to aid researchers in their interpretations of these scores. In their commentary, Constantino and…

This research addresses the challenges of assessing receptive language abilities in minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder by comparing several adapted measurement tools: a standardized direct assessment of receptive vocabulary (i.e. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-4); caregiver report measures including scores on the Vineland-II…

There is a paucity of instruments designed to measure social competence of adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. The Social Responsiveness Scale is one of a few that can be used. This study compared differences between mother and father reports of social competence of adolescents. Data were collected from parents of 50 adolescents with and…

The psychometric properties of the Pediatric Anxiety Rating Scale (PARS), a clinician-administered measure for assessing severity of anxiety symptoms, were examined in 72 children and adolescents diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The internal consistency of the PARS was 0.59, suggesting that the items were related but not…