People in the general population are typically very poor at detecting changes in pictures of complex scenes. The degree of this 'change blindness', however, varies with the content of the scene: when an object is semantically important or contextually inappropriate, people may be more effective at detecting changes. Two experiments investigated change blindness in people with autism, who are kn...

There is little information available about how and why parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) make decisions regarding which of the many available treatments to implement with their children. Given the lack of available information regarding treatment efficacy, it is likely that parents' beliefs about child development, interpretation of the symptoms of ASD, its etiology and ...

The Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory-Computer Adaptive Test is an alternative method for describing the adaptive function of children and youth with disabilities using a computer-administered assessment. This study evaluated the performance of the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory-Computer Adaptive Test with a national sample of children and youth with autism spectrum dis...

The incidence of autism spectrum disorders may have increased in the past few decades. If so, it is important to identify possible causes. Here we consider whether exposure to artificial displays such as television in the first year or two of life is a contributing factor for infants already at risk of autism. Correlational studies and anecdotal evidence from clinical practice are consistent wi...

Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC, also referred to as Autism Spectrum Disorders) entail difficulties with inhibition: inhibiting action, inhibiting one's own point of view, and inhibiting distractions that may interfere with a response set. However, the association between inhibitory control (IC) and ASC, especially in adulthood, is unclear. The current study measured IC, using the Go/No-Go task...

The number of children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder has increased dramatically in the last 20 years. Parents of children with autism experience a variety of chronic and acute stressors that can erode marital satisfaction and family functioning. Family therapists are well-suited to help parents stay connected to each other as they create a "new normal." However, family therapists n...

A new virtual reality task was employed which uses preference for interpersonal distance to social stimuli to examine social motivation and emotion perception in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Nineteen high function children with higher functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD) and 23 age, gender, and IQ matched children with typical development (TD) used a joy stick to position th...

BACKGROUND In early typical language development, children understand words before they are able to use them in speech. Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) generally show impairments in both the comprehension and the production of language. However, the relative degree of delay or impairment in each of these sub-domains may also be atypical and remains less well-understood. AIMS Rel...

In this paper, we give an overview of the diagnostic categories of autism and other pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) and discuss the changes in the DSM classification system over the past 20 years. We describe each subtype of PDD, along with comorbid psychiatric conditions, assessment guidelines, and tools for diagnosis. The epidemiology of autism has generated much discussion and resea...

Although genes associated with human autism spectrum disorders have been identified, bridging the gap between genetics and the patchwork of behavioral deficits associated with the disease remains an enormous challenge. Peñagarikano et al. (2011) now show that mice lacking CNTNAP2, a gene that causes a rare form of epilepsy associated with autistic features and language impairment, display simil...