Theory suggests that information processing during joint attention may be atypical in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This hypothesis was tested in a study of school-aged children with higher functioning ASD and groups of children with symptoms of ADHD or typical development. The results indicated that the control groups displayed…

Theory suggests that information processing during joint attention may be atypical in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This hypothesis was tested in a study of school-aged children with higher functioning ASD and groups of children with symptoms of ADHD or typical development. The results indicated that the control groups displayed…

Altered power of resting-state neurophysiological activity has been associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which commonly co-occur. We compared resting-state neurophysiological power in children with ASD, ADHD, co-occurring ASD + ADHD, and typically developing controls. Children with ASD…

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a multi-component communication intervention on social communication for young children with autism. As many as half of children with autism are not yet talking by age 3, and up to a third of children with autism will remain minimally verbal past age 5. Spoken language outcomes are…

To test a central assumption of the increased perceptual capacity account in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the effects of perceptual load and target-stimulus degradation on auditory detection sensitivity were contrasted. Fourteen adolescents with ASD and 16 neurotypical controls performed a visual letter search task under three…

The relationship between autism, criminality and psychopathy has gained increased attention in recent years, although research has focused on autism spectrum disorders, and not autistic traits. We measured autistic traits (with the Autism Spectrum Quotient) in a sample of 101 inmates from a high-security prison and compared them to a control…

Inability to acquire a new motor skill is a common motor difficulty in children with autism spectrum disorder. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the motor learning benefits of an external focus of attention for typically developing children and children with intellectual disabilities could also be applied to children with autism…

Background: Impairment in initiating joint attention (IJA) is associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children, although it is unclear when impairments arise. Due to the early development of IJA use and late diagnosis of ASD, groups at high-risk of ASD, such as infants with an older sibling with ASD (ASIBs) and infants with fragile X…

Scripts in written or auditory form have been used to teach conversational skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but with the proliferation of handheld tablet devices the scope to combine these 2 formats has broadened. The aim of this pilot study was to investigate if a script-based intervention, presented on an iPad…

We examined spontaneous attention orienting to visual salience in stimuli without social significance using a modified Dot-Probe task during functional magnetic resonance imaging in high-functioning preadolescent children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and age- and IQ-matched control children. While the magnitude of attentional bias (faster…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit social-communicative impairments. Less is known about the neuropsychological profile of ASD, although cognitive and neuropsychological deficits are evident. We modelled neuropsychological function in 20 children with ASD and 20 sex, age and IQ matched typically-developing controls (ages 7-14) as…

This study assessed the effectiveness of an attention intervention program (Computerized Progressive Attentional Training; CPAT) in improving academic performance of children with ASD. Fifteen 6-10 year olds with ASD attending a mainstream and a special school were assigned to an experimental (CPAT; n = 8) and active control (computer games; n =…

Young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a high prevalence (~40 %) of anxiety disorders compared to their non-ASD peers. It is unclear whether cognitive and biological processes associated with anxiety in ASD are analogous to anxiety in typically developing (TD) populations. In this study 55 boys with ASD (34 with a co-occurring…

Several researchers along with technicians have been developing software and hardware to support and/or replace the standard method of teaching for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and/or other developmental disabilities. Moreover, computer-based intervention and electronic tablets have shown benefits for people with special needs…

Prosaccade and antisaccade errors in the context of social and nonsocial stimuli were investigated in youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 19) a matched control sample (n = 19), and a small sample of youth with obsessive compulsive disorder (n = 9). Groups did not differ in error rates in the prosaccade condition for any stimulus…