The social communicative deficits and repetitive behaviours seen in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may be affected by altered stimulus salience and reward attribution. The present study used eye tracking and a behavioural measure to index effort expenditure, arousal, and attention, during viewing of images depicting social scenes and…

How do school professionals distinguish between social, communication, and behavioral differences observed in typically developing English language learners (ELLs) and those ELL students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)? Informed consideration is necessary to avoid inaccurate identification and to ensure appropriate supports are provided;…

Mimicry involves unconsciously copying the actions of others. Increasing evidence suggests that autistic people can copy the goal of an observed action but show differences in their mimicry. We investigated mimicry in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) within a two-dimensional virtual reality environment. Participants played an imitation game with a…

Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) is a common autosomal dominant single-gene disorder, in which the co-occurrence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has attracted considerable research interest recently with prevalence estimates of 21-40%. However, detailed characterization of the ASD behavioral phenotype in NF1 is still lacking. This study…

The purpose of this paper was to further establish the validity of the Autism Spectrum Disorder-Diagnostic for Children (ASD-DC). The methodology consisted of testing the similarity of findings between the ASD-DC and the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), which proved to be statistically significant for subscale content scores on social,…

Background: In addition to the core symptoms, children with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) often exhibit other problem behaviors such as aggression, hyperactivity, and anxiety, which can contribute to overall impairment and, therefore, become the focus of clinical attention. Limited data are available on the prevalence of anxiety in these…

The present paper consists of two parts. In the first part, eleven high-functioning adults with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) participated and were videotaped with a concealed camera while having an initial conversation with a typically developing stranger. Analyses revealed some significant differences with regard to the dyad members'…

A cluster analytic study was conducted to derive behaviorally homogeneous subtypes of pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) based on a range of behavioral symptoms that characterize autism. Analysis of data on 34 children with PDD, 27 of whom met criteria for autism, indicated 4 distinct groups differing on independent measures of social,…