Children and adolescents with autism have a higher likelihood of being exposed to bullying, abuse, and sexual assault which, through repeated exposure, has been demonstrated to impede academic, social, and physical functioning among this population. However, the complexity of unpacking the characteristics of autism and trauma can pose a challenge…

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a large-scale move to remote delivery of healthcare services. However, little research has directly explored telehealth experiences of autistic adults, a population strongly affected by health inequalities and care access barriers. This study sought telehealth experiences of 11 autistic adults (aged 27-67 years),…

Research suggests that reading for understanding, especially narrative text, is difficult for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD); yet research on how to effectively teach skills associated with reading comprehension is limited and has generally deemphasized vocabulary interventions. This single case research design study (i.e., a…

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children be screened for autism at 18 and 24 months. It is unknown whether a positive screen usually represents the first developmental concern or is typically preceded by other developmental and/or medical concerns. This study evaluated the proportions of toddlers (M = 18.69 months) who screened…

Evidence suggests increased mortality rates among autistic individuals. However, risks of mortality, including natural-cause, suicide, and accident mortalities, among autistic individuals remain unclear. Among the entire Taiwanese population (N = 29,253,529), between 2003 and 2017, 45,398 autistic individuals were identified and 1:4 matched to…

Many youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience co-occurring conditions, such as gastrointestinal (GI) problems and internalizing symptoms. However, the relationship among these co-occurring problems is not well-understood. We analyzed parent reports of GI problems and internalizing symptoms of 621 youth with ASD using path models in a…

It is unclear whether children with autism spectrum disorders have atypical semantic fluency and lower memory for the semantics of words. Therefore, we examined semantic typicality, fluency and recall for the categories of fruits and animals in 60 children with autism aged 7-15 years (boys: 48/girls: 12) compared to 60 typically developing…

The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) is a purported theory of mind measure and one that reliably differentiates autistic and non-autistic individuals. However, concerns have been raised about the validity of the measure, with some researchers suggesting that the multiple-choice format of the RMET makes it susceptible to the undue influence…

This study purports to bridge the gap in research directed at people with Low Functioning Autism (LFA) by exploring if sensory discrimination ability can be used to assess cognitive functioning in children with LFA. The study was done in two phases: (i) a pilot phase (with 4 male participants; mean age = 3 years 6.5 months)--which tried to…

Background: The assessment of schizophrenia in autistic people with intellectual disabilities is challenging. This study aimed to explore the identification of schizophrenia in this population. Methods: Using data from a clinical multi-centre study, reported symptoms in 26 autistic individuals with intellectual disabilities diagnosed with…

Studies have proposed that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be divided into several subtypes depending on their sensory features. However, consideration of social communication features is also crucial for configuring ASD subtypes, because social and sensory features are tightly interrelated. In this study, we asked Japanese…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit challenging behaviors. Existing behavioral parent trainings (BPT) address ASD symptomology, but are lengthy and associated with significant attrition. In the current pilot study, a longitudinal randomized controlled trial was used to evaluate a novel brief BPT targeting caregivers of…

Approximately 30% of autistic children are considered minimally verbal. The field lacks an efficient and reliable measure of communicative capacity among minimally verbal autistic children. Improved methods are needed to determine which children are at greatest risk for minimally verbal outcomes to better target interventions. Here, we present the…

Despite substantial comorbidity of sensory dysfunction and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there are few evidence-based sensory interventions for educators to implement in their classrooms. Nonetheless, recent research has found that early childhood educators are frequently implementing sensory strategies in the classroom despite this lack of…

Autism traits are common exclusionary criteria in developmental prosopagnosia (DP) studies. We investigated whether autism traits produce qualitatively different face processing in 43 DPs with high vs. low autism quotient (AQ) scores. Compared to controls (n = 27), face memory and perception were similarly deficient in the high- and low-AQ DPs,…