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International Society for Autism Research NewsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - November 11, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Society Pages Source Type: journals

The International Meeting for Autism ResearchEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - November 11, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Society Pages Source Type: journals

Lay abstractsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - November 11, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Lay Abstracts Source Type: journals

Gyrification patterns in monozygotic twin pairs varying in discordance for autismEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In order to disentangle genetic and environmental contributions to cortical anomalies in children with autism, we investigated cortical folding patterns in a cohort of 14 monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs who displayed a range of phenotypic discordance for autism, and 14 typically developing community controls. Cortical folding was assessed with the gyrification index, which was calculated on high resolution anatomic MR images. We found that the cortical folding patterns across most lobar regions of the cerebral cortex was highly discordant within MZ twin pairs. In addition, children with autism and their co-twins exhibited incr...
Source: Autism Research - November 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Wendy R. Kates, Ichiro Ikuta, Courtney P. Burnette Source Type: journals

A comprehensive volumetric analysis of the cerebellum in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorderEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and postmortem neuropathological studies have implicated the cerebellum in the pathophysiology of autism. Controversy remains, however, concerning the nature and the consistency of cerebellar alterations. MRI studies of the cross-sectional area of the vermis have found both decreases and no difference in autism groups. Volumetric analysis of the vermis, which is less prone to "plane of section artifacts" may provide a more reliable assessment of size differences but few such studies exist in the literature. Here we present the results of a volumetric analysis of the structure of the whole c...
Source: Autism Research - November 3, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Julia A. Scott, Cynthia Mills Schumann, Beth L. Goodlin-Jones, David G. Amaral Source Type: journals

Identification of chromosome 7 inversion breakpoints in an autistic family narrows candidate region for autism susceptibilityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Chromosomal breaks and rearrangements have been observed in conjunction with autism and autistic spectrum disorders. A chromosomal inversion has been previously reported in autistic siblings, spanning the region from approximately 7q22.1 to 7q31. This family is distinguished by having multiple individuals with autism and associated disabilities. The region containing the inversion has been strongly implicated in autism by multiple linkage studies, and has been particularly associated with language defects in autism as well as in other disorders with language components. Mapping of the inversion breakpoints by FISH has loca...
Source: Autism Research - October 29, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Holly N. Cukier, David A. Skaar, Melissa Y. Rayner-Evans, Ioanna Konidari, Patrice L. Whitehead, James M. Jaworski, Michael L. Cuccaro, Margaret A. Pericak-Vance, John R. Gilbert Source Type: journals

Prototype formation in autism: Can individuals with autism abstract facial prototypes?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study used a natural category, faces, to further examine prototype formation in high-functioning individuals with autism. High-functioning children (age 8-13 years) and adults with autism (age 17-53 years) and matched controls were tested in a facial prototype formation task that has been used to test prototype formation abilities in typically developing infants and adults [Strauss, ]. Participants were familiarized to a series of faces depicting subtle variations in the spatial distance of facial features, and were then given a forced choice familiarity test between the mean prototype and the mode prototype. Overall,...
Source: Autism Research - October 28, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Holly Zajac Gastgeb, Keiran M. Rump, Catherine A. Best, Nancy J. Minshew, Mark S. Strauss Source Type: journals

Where are the autism economists?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - October 20, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Anthony J. Bailey Source Type: journals

Gastrointestinal symptoms in ASD, brain structure of identical twins with ASDEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - October 16, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Edwin H. Cook Jr Source Type: journals

International Society for Autism Research NewsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - September 8, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Society Page Source Type: journals

Lay abstractsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - September 8, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Lay Abstracts Source Type: journals

Citalopram efficacy study; interstitial 15q11-q13 duplication mouseEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - September 8, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Edwin H. Cook Jr. Tags: Literature Review Source Type: journals

ErratumEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - August 26, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Source Type: journals

Shared and idiosyncratic cortical activation patterns in autism revealed under continuous real-life viewing conditionsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Although widespread alterations in cortical structure have been documented in individuals with autism, the functional implications of these alterations remain to be determined. Here, we adopted a novel inter-subject correlation (inter-SC) and intra-subject correlation (intra-SC) technique to quantify the reliability of the spatio-temporal responses of functional MR activity in adults with autism during free-viewing of a popular audio-visual movie. Whereas these complex stimuli evoke highly reliable shared response time courses in typical individuals, cortical activity was more variable across individuals with autism (low i...
Source: Autism Research - August 25, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Uri Hasson, Galia Avidan, Hagar Gelbard, Ignacio Vallines, Michal Harel, Nancy Minshew, Marlene Behrmann Source Type: journals

Further evidence that the rs1858830 C variant in the promoter region of the MET gene is associated with Autistic disorderEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study screened two cohorts, an Autistic Disorder cohort from South Carolina and a Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) cohort from Italy, for the presence of the C allele variant in rs1858830. A significant increase in the C allele variant frequency was found in the South Carolina Autistic Disorder patients as compared to South Carolina Controls ([chi]2=5.8, df=1, P=0.02). In the South Carolina cohort, a significant association with Autistic Disorder was found when comparing the CC and CG genotypes to the GG genotype (odds ratio (OR)=1.64; 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.12-2.40; [chi]2=6.5, df=1, P=0.01) in cases an...
Source: Autism Research - August 13, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Pamela B. Jackson, Luigi Boccuto, Cindy Skinner, Julianne S. Collins, Giovanni Neri, Fiorella Gurrieri, Charles E. Schwartz Source Type: journals

Decreased GABAA receptors and benzodiazepine binding sites in the anterior cingulate cortex in autismEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC; BA 24) via its extensive limbic and high order association cortical connectivity to prefrontal cortex is a key part of an important circuitry participating in executive function, affect, and socio-emotional behavior. Multiple lines of evidence, including genetic and imaging studies, suggest that the ACC and gamma-amino-butyric acid (GABA) system may be affected in autism. The benzodiazepine binding site on the GABAA receptor complex is an important target for pharmacotherapy and has important clinical implications. The present multiple-concentration ligand-binding study utilized 3H-musci...
Source: Autism Research - July 31, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: A. Oblak, T.T. Gibbs, G.J. Blatt Source Type: journals

Involuntary interpretation of social cues is compromised in autism spectrum disordersEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
A new social distance judgment task was used to measure quantitatively the extent to which social cues are immediately and involuntary interpreted by typically developing (TD) individuals and by individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The task thus tapped into the ability to involuntary "pick up" the meaning of social cues. The cues tested were social attention and implied biological motion. Task performance of the ASD and TD groups was similarly affected by a perceptual low-level illusion induced by physical characteristics of the stimuli. In contrast, a high-level illusion induced by the implications of the soc...
Source: Autism Research - July 29, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tjeerd Jellema, Jeannette Lorteije, Sophie van Rijn, Mascha van t' Wout, Edward de Haan, Herman van Engeland, Chantal Kemner Source Type: journals

Autism spectrum disorders in relation to parental occupation in technical fieldsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
A previous study reported that fathers of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were more likely to work as engineers, requiring "systemizing skills," and suggesting a distinct phenotype, but alternatively this may have been related to selection biases. We conducted a population-based study to explore whether fathers, or mothers, of children with ASD are over-represented in fields requiring highly technical skills. Subjects included 284 children with ASD and 659 gender-matched controls, born in 1994 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Parental occupation and industry were abstracted verbatim from birth certificates. Eng...
Source: Autism Research - July 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Gayle C. Windham, Karen Fessel, Judith K. Grether Source Type: journals

Genes related to sex steroids, neural growth, and social-emotional behavior are associated with autistic traits, empathy, and asperger syndromeEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Genetic studies of autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have mostly focused on the "low functioning" severe clinical subgroup, treating it as a rare disorder. However, ASC is now thought to be relatively common ([sim]1%), and representing one end of a quasi-normal distribution of autistic traits in the general population. Here we report a study of common genetic variation in candidate genes associated with autistic traits and Asperger syndrome (AS). We tested single nucleotide polymorphisms in 68 candidate genes in three functional groups (sex steroid synthesis/transport, neural connectivity, and social-emotional responsivity)...
Source: Autism Research - July 13, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: B. Chakrabarti, F. Dudbridge, L. Kent, S. Wheelwright, G. Hill-Cawthorne, C. Allison, S. Banerjee-Basu, S. Baron-Cohen Source Type: journals

What are infant siblings teaching us about autism in infancy?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
International research to understand infant patterns of development in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has recently focused on a research paradigm involving prospective longitudinal studies of infant siblings of children with autism. Such designs use a comparison group of infant siblings without any familial risks (the low-risk group) to gather longitudinal information about developmental skills across the first 3 years of life, followed by clinical diagnosis of ASD at 36 months. This review focuses on five topics: presence of ASD in the infant sibling groups, patterns and characteristics of motor development, patterns an...
Source: Autism Research - July 6, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Sally J. Rogers Source Type: journals

Preference for physical compared to biological motion; genome-wide association studyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - July 5, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Edwin H. Cook Jr. Source Type: journals

Moral Dilemmas Film Task: a study of spontaneous narratives by individuals with autism spectrum conditionsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
People with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have difficulties with mentalizing, empathy, and narrative comprehension. A new test of social and narrative cognition, the Moral Dilemmas Film Task, was developed to probe individuals' spontaneous understanding of naturalistic film scenes. Twenty-eight individuals with ASC and 28 neurotypical controls, matched for age, sex, and IQ, watched four short emotionally charged film clips each depicting a moral dilemma, and were asked to write about what they had seen. Individuals with ASC produced significantly shorter film-based narratives and showed a smaller bias for mental states ...
Source: Autism Research - July 4, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Jennifer L. Barnes, Michael V. Lombardo, Sally Wheelwright, Simon Baron-Cohen Source Type: journals

Impairments on "open-ended" executive function tests in autismEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The executive function (EF) theory of autism has received much support recently from a growing number of studies. However, executive impairments have not always been easy to identify consistently and so novel "ecologically valid" tests have been designed which tap into real-life scenarios that are relevant to and representative of everyday behavior. One characteristic of many of these tasks is that they present the participant with an "ill-structured" or "open-ended" situation. Here, we investigated the possibility that tasks with greater degrees of open-endedness might prove more sensitive to detecting executive impairmen...
Source: Autism Research - June 24, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Sarah J. White, Paul W. Burgess, Elisabeth L. Hill Source Type: journals

International Society for Autism Research NewsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - May 19, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Society Page Source Type: journals

Lay abstractsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - May 19, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Lay Abstracts Source Type: journals

Habituation to neutral faces; Language regression in ASDEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - May 19, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Edwin H. Cook Jr Tags: Literature Review Source Type: journals

Gene expression profiling differentiates autism case-controls and phenotypic variants of autism spectrum disorders: evidence for circadian rhythm dysfunction in severe autismEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by delayed/abnormal language development, deficits in social interaction, repetitive behaviors and restricted interests. The heterogeneity in clinical presentation of ASD, likely due to different etiologies, complicates genetic/biological analyses of these disorders. DNA microarray analyses were conducted on 116 lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCL) from individuals with idiopathic autism who are divided into three phenotypic subgroups according to severity scores from the commonly used Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised questionnaire and age-matched...
Source: Autism Research - May 7, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Valerie W. Hu, Tewarit Sarachana, Kyung Soon Kim, AnhThu Nguyen, Shreya Kulkarni, Mara E. Steinberg, Truong Luu, Yinglei Lai, Norman H. Lee Source Type: journals

The MTHFR 677C[rarr]T polymorphism and behaviors in children with autism: exploratory genotype-phenotype correlationsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
New evidence suggests that autism may be associated with (a) varied behavioral responses to folate therapy and (b) metabolic anomalies, including those in folate metabolism, that contribute to hypomethylation of DNA. We hypothesized that children with autism who are homozygous for the MTHFR 677 T allele (TT) and, to a lesser extent those with the CT variant, would exhibit more behavioral problems and/or more severe problematic behaviors than homozygous wild-type (CC) individuals because of difficulties in effectively converting 5,10-MTHF to 5-MTHF. Data from the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE) collection were analy...
Source: Autism Research - April 5, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Robin P. Goin-Kochel, Anne E. Porter, Sarika U. Peters, Marwan Shinawi, Trilochan Sahoo, Arthur L. Beaudet Source Type: journals

Novel clustering of items from the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised to define phenotypes within autism spectrum disordersEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Heterogeneity in phenotypic presentation of Autism spectrum disorders has been cited as one explanation for the difficulty in pinpointing specific genes involved in autism. Recent studies have attempted to reduce the "noise" in genetic and other biological data by reducing the phenotypic heterogeneity of the sample population. The current study employs multiple clustering algorithms on 123 item scores from the Autism Diagnostic Interview - Revised (ADI-R) diagnostic instrument of nearly 2,000 autistic individuals to identify subgroups of autistic probands with clinically relevant behavioral phenotypes in order to isolate m...
Source: Autism Research - March 26, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Valerie W. Hu, Mara E. Steinberg Source Type: journals

Twenty-year outcome for individuals with autism and average or near-average cognitive abilitiesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study examined adult outcome for 41 such individuals (38 men and 3 women) originally identified through an epidemiological survey of autism in Utah. Mean age at the time of their previous cognitive assessment was 7.2 years (SD=4.1, range=3.1-25.9 years) and at follow-up was 32.5 years (SD=5.7 years, range=22.3-46.4 years). Outcome measures included standardized assessments of diagnostic status, cognitive ability, and adaptive behavior. Additional information collected concerned demographic variables, indicators of independence, social relationships, medical and psychiatric conditions, and social service use. Outcomes ...
Source: Autism Research - March 19, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Megan A. Farley, William M. McMahon, Eric Fombonne, William R. Jenson, Judith Miller, Michael Gardner, Heidi Block, Carmen B. Pingree, Edward R. Ritvo, Riva Arielle Ritvo, Hilary Coon Source Type: journals

Language and reading abilities of children with autism spectrum disorders and specific language impairment and their first-degree relativesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, we examined IQ, language, and reading abilities of ASD and SLI children and their first-degree relatives to address whether the language difficulties observed in some children with ASD are familial and to better understand the degree of overlap between these disorders and their broader phenotypes. Participants were 52 autistic children, 36 children with SLI, their siblings, and their parents. The ASD group was divided into those with (ALI, n=32) and without (ALN, n=20) language impairment. Relationships between ASD severity and language performance were also examined in the ASD probands. ALI and SLI probands...
Source: Autism Research - March 14, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Kristen A. Lindgren, Susan E. Folstein, J. Bruce Tomblin, Helen Tager-Flusberg Source Type: journals

A parallel and distributed-processing model of joint attention, social cognition and autismEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The impaired development of joint attention is a cardinal feature of autism. Therefore, understanding the nature of joint attention is central to research on this disorder. Joint attention may be best defined in terms of an information-processing system that begins to develop by 4-6 months of age. This system integrates the parallel processing of internal information about one's own visual attention with external information about the visual attention of other people. This type of joint encoding of information about self and other attention requires the activation of a distributed anterior and posterior cortical attention ...
Source: Autism Research - March 12, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Peter Mundy, Lisa Sullivan, Ann M. Mastergeorge Source Type: journals

Comparing cortisol, stress, and sensory sensitivity in children with autismEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Previously we reported that children with autism show significant variability in cortisol. The current investigation was designed to extend these findings by exploring plausible relationships between cortisol and psychological measures of stress and sensory functioning. Salivary cortisol values for diurnal rhythms and response to stress in children with and without autism were compared to parent-report measures of child stress, the Stress Survey Schedule (SSS), sensory functioning, Short Sensory Profile (SSP), and Parenting Stress Index. In autism, a negative relationship between morning cortisol and the SSS revealed that ...
Source: Autism Research - March 12, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Blythe A. Corbett, Clayton W. Schupp, Seymour Levine, Sally Mendoza Source Type: journals

Decreased GAD65 mRNA levels in select subpopulations of neurons in the cerebellar dentate nuclei in autism: an in situ hybridization studyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The laterally positioned dentate nuclei lie in a key position in the cerebellum to receive input from Purkinje cells in the lateral cerebellar hemisphere participating in both motor and cognitive functions. Although neuropathology of the four cerebellar nuclei using Nissl staining has been qualitatively reported in children and adults with autism, surprisingly the dentate nuclei appeared less affected despite reported reductions in Purkinje cells in the posterolateral cerebellar hemisphere. To determine any underlying abnormalities in the critically important GABAergic system, the rate-limiting GABA synthesizing enzyme, gl...
Source: Autism Research - March 7, 2009 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Jane Yip, Jean Jacques Soghomonian, Gene J. Blatt Source Type: journals

International Society for Autism Research NewsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - December 30, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Society Pages Source Type: journals

The International Meeting for Autism ResearchEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - December 30, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Society Pages Source Type: journals

Lay abstractsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - December 30, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Lay Abstracts Source Type: journals

Literature Review: Overlapping genetic association in developmental language disorder and autism; Grey matter in high functioning autism and Asperger's syndrome; Brain activation in self-other face discriminationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - December 30, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Edwin H. Cook Jr Tags: Literature Review Source Type: journals

Examination of association to autism of common genetic variationin genes related to dopamineEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Autism is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by a triad of complications. Autistic individuals display significant disturbances in language and reciprocal social interactions, combined with repetitive and stereotypic behaviors. Prevalence studies suggest that autism is more common than originally believed, with recent estimates citing a rate of one in 150. Although multiple genetic linkage and association studies have yielded multiple suggestive genes or chromosomal regions, a specific risk locus has yet to be identified and widely confirmed. Because many etiologies have been suggested for this complex synd...
Source: Autism Research - December 30, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: B.M. Anderson, N. Schnetz-Boutaud, J. Bartlett, H.H. Wright, R.K. Abramson, M.L. Cuccaro, J.R. Gilbert, M.A. Pericak-Vance, J.L. Haines Tags: Short Report Source Type: journals

Evidence that the pattern of visuomotor sequence learning is altered in children with autismEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Motor deficits are commonly reported in autism, with one of the most consistent findings being impaired execution of skilled movements and gestures. Given the developmental nature of autism, it is possible that deficits in motor/procedural learning contribute to impaired acquisition of motor skills. Thus, careful examination of mechanisms underlying learning and memory may be critical to understanding the neural basis of autism. A previous study reported impaired motor learning in children with high-functioning autism (HFA); however, it is unclear whether the observed deficits in motor learning are due, in part, to impaire...
Source: Autism Research - December 30, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Jennifer C. Gidley Larson, Stewart H. Mostofsky Tags: Research Articles Source Type: journals

Specific impairment of face-processing abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder using the Let's Face It! skills batteryEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, the Let's Face It! Skills Battery [Tanaka & Schultz, 2008] of developmental face- and object-processing measures was administered to a large sample of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing children. The main finding was that when matched for age and IQ, individuals with ASD were selectively impaired in their ability to recognize faces across changes in orientation, expression and featural information. In a face discrimination task, ASD participants showed a preserved ability to discriminate featural and configural information in the mouth region of a face, but were c...
Source: Autism Research - December 30, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Julie M. Wolf, James W. Tanaka, Cheryl Klaiman, Jeff Cockburn, Lauren Herlihy, Carla Brown, Mikle South, James McPartland, Martha D. Kaiser, Rebecca Phillips, Robert T. Schultz Tags: Research Articles Source Type: journals

The onset of autism: patterns of symptom emergence in the first years of lifeEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article reviews the literature on autism onset, discusses problems with the traditional ways in which onset has been conceptualized, and provides recommendations for future research. We suggest that onset is better thought of as a dimensional process rather than dichotomous categories. (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - December 30, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Sally Ozonoff, Kelly Heung, Robert Byrd, Robin Hansen, Irva Hertz-Picciotto Tags: Review Article Source Type: journals

Assessing autistic traits: cross-cultural validation of the social responsiveness scale (SRS)Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) is a quantitative measure of autistic traits in 4- to 18-year-olds, which has been used in behavior-genetic, epidemiological and intervention studies. The US standardization demonstrated a single-factor structure and good to excellent psychometric properties. The cross-cultural validity of the German adaptation of the parent-report SRS in a sample of N=1,436 children and adolescents: 838 typically developing and 527 clinical participants (160 with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs)) was examined. Internal consistency (0.91-0.97), test-retest reliability (0.84-0.97), interrater reliabilit...
Source: Autism Research - December 24, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Sven Bölte, Fritz Poustka, John N. Constantino Source Type: journals

Literature review: adult structural MRI, postmortem GABA-a protein, 1q21.1 microdeletion/microduplicationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Autism Research)
Source: Autism Research - November 27, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Edwin H. Cook Jr. Source Type: journals

Face inversion effects in autism: a combined looking time and pupillometric studyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Previous research has found that in typically developing individuals, behavioral performance declines and electrophysiological brain responses are altered when the face is inverted. Such effects are generally attributed to disruption of configural information. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been found to show less pronounced inversion effects, a result in line with the view that featural processing of faces is enhanced in ASD. No study has determined if, or how, such local bias is reflected in the eye movements used in face observation. In this eye tracking study, looking time and pupil dilation were ...
Source: Autism Research - November 21, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Terje Falck-Ytter Source Type: journals

Reduced levels of immunoglobulin in children with autism correlates with behavioral symptomsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Objectives: To assay if plasma antibody levels in children with autism or developmental delays (DD) differ from those with typical development as an indicator of immune function and to correlate antibody levels with severity of behavioral symptoms.Methods: Plasma was collected from children with autistic disorder (AU; n=116), DD but not autism (n=32), autism spectrum disorder but not full autism (n=27), and age-matched typically developing (TD) controls (n=96). Samples were assayed for systemic levels of immunoglobulin (IgG, IgM, IgA, and IgE) by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Subjects with autism were evaluated using ...
Source: Autism Research - November 19, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Luke Heuer, Paul Ashwood, Joseph Schauer, Paula Goines, Paula Krakowiak, Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Robin Hansen, Lisa A. Croen, Isaac N. Pessah, Judy Van de Water Source Type: journals

Overlap between autism and specific language impairment: comparison of Autism Diagnostic Interview and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule scoresEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Autism and specific language impairment (SLI) are developmental disorders that, although distinct by definition, have in common some features of both language and social behavior. The goal of this study was to further explore the extent to which specific clinical features of autism are seen in SLI. The children with the two disorders, matched for non-verbal IQ, were compared on the Autism Diagnostic Interview - Revised (ADI-R) and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS). In the SLI group, 41% met autism or autism spectrum cut-offs for social or communication domains either on the ADI or ADOS or both. No relations...
Source: Autism Research - November 17, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Ovsanna T. Leyfer, Helen Tager-Flusberg, Michael Dowd, J. Bruce Tomblin, Susan E. Folstein Source Type: journals

Relationships between multiple births and autism spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, and intellectual disabilities: autism and developmental disabilities monitoring (ADDM) network - 2002 surveillance yearEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Since the 1970s, the prevalence of multiple births (MBs) in the United States has increased significantly. This has been attributed, in large part, to iatrogenic MBs resulting from infertility treatments that include ovulation stimulation. A past study has indicated that children from MBs have an increased prevalence of cerebral palsy (CP). Other studies also have suggested an association between MBs and intellectual disabilities (ID) and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs); however, results have been inconsistent. From the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, a surveillance project among several U...
Source: Autism Research - October 30, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Kim Van Naarden Braun, Laura Schieve, Julie Daniels, Maureen Durkin, Ellen Giarelli, Russell S. Kirby, Li-Ching Lee, Craig Newschaffer, Joyce Nicholas, Jennifer Pinto-Martin Source Type: journals

Do children with autism spectrum disorders show a shape bias in word learning?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) acquire a sizeable lexicon. However, these children also seem to understand and/or store the meanings of words differently from typically developing children. One of the mechanisms that helps typically developing children learn novel words is the shape bias, in which the referent of a noun is mapped onto the shape of an object, rather than onto its color, texture, or size. We hypothesized that children with autistic disorder would show reduced or absent shape bias. Using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm , we compared the performance of young children with ASD a...
Source: Autism Research - October 2, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Saime Tek, Gul Jaffery, Deborah Fein, Letitia R. Naigles Source Type: journals

Heterogeneity and the design of genetic studies in autismEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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Source: Autism Research - October 1, 2008 Category: Psychiatry Authors: James S. Sutcliffe Source Type: journals