BACKGROUND Disordered expressive prosody is a widely reported characteristic of individuals with autism. Despite this, it has received little attention in the literature and the few studies that have addressed it have not described its relationship to other aspects of communication. AIMS To determine the nature and relationship of expressive and receptive language, phonology, pragmatics, and ...

Sentence complexity in children with autism and specific language impairment." MA (Master of Arts) thesis, iii ABSTRACT Children with high-functioning autism, children with specific language impairment, children with autism and language impairment, and controls produced sentences after a prompt to form a sentence using a specific word. The sentences were analyzed for length and syntactic comple...

This study tested the efficacy of a new social skills intervention, S ocial S kills GR oup IN tervention-High Functioning Autism (S.S.GRIN-HFA), designed to improve social behaviors in children with high functioning autism spectrum disorders. Fifty-five children were randomly assigned to S.S.GRIN-HFA treatment (n = 27) or control (i.e., traditional S.S.GRIN intervention; n = 28). Examination of...

Behavioral studies have documented a relative advantage in some aspects of visuospatial cognition in autism although it is not consistently found in higher functioning individuals with autism. The purpose of this functional neuroimaging study was to examine the neural activity in high functioning individuals with autism while they performed a block design task that systematically varied with re...

Recently, there has been increased focus on movement and sensory abnormalities in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This has come from research demonstrating cortical and cerebellar differences in autism, with suggestion of early cerebellar dysfunction. As evidence for an extended profile of ASD grows, there are vast implications for treatment and therapy for individuals with autism. Persons wit...

An increasing number of animal studies advert to a substantial role of the neuropeptide oxytocin in the regulation of social attachment and affiliation. Furthermore, animal studies showed anxiety and stress-reduced effects of oxytocin. First human studies confirm these findings in animal studies and implicate a crucial role of oxytocin in human social attachment behavior and in social interacti...

This case study investigates the effects of Robot Assisted Language Learning (RALL) on English vocabulary learning and retention of Iranian children with high-functioning autism. Two groups of three male students (6-10 years old) with high-functioning autism participated in the current study. The humanoid robot NAO was used as a teacher assistant to teach English to the RALL group. Both RALL an...

The arcuate fasciculus is a white matter fiber bundle of great importance in language. In this study, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) was used to infer white matter integrity in the arcuate fasciculi of a group of subjects with high-functioning autism and a control group matched for age, handedness, IQ, and head size. The arcuate fasciculus for each subject was automatically extracted from the i...

Reliability and validity for three autism instruments were compared for 190 children with low functioning autism (LFA), 190 children with high functioning autism or Asperger's disorder (HFA), 76 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and 64 typical children. The instruments were the Checklist for Autism Spectrum Disorder (designed for children with LFA and HFA), Childhoo...

The high-functioning Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ) is a 27-item checklist for completion by lay informants when assessing symptoms characteristic of Asperger syndrome and other high-functioning autism spectrum disorders in children and adolescents with normal intelligence or mild mental retardation. Data for parent and teacher ratings in a clinical sample are presented along wi...