Whilst enhanced perception has been widely reported in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs), relatively little is known about the developmental trajectory and impact of atypical auditory processing on speech perception in intellectually high-functioning adults with ASD. This paper presents data on perception of complex tones and…

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) is widely used to estimate autistic intelligence (Joseph in The neuropsychology of autism. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011; Goldstein et al. in "Assessment of autism spectrum disorders." Guilford Press, New York, 2008; Mottron in "J Autism Dev Disord" 34(1):19-27, 2004).…

Auditory stream segregation allows us to organize our sound environment, by focusing on specific information and ignoring what is unimportant. One previous study reported difficulty in stream segregation ability in children with Asperger syndrome. In order to investigate this question further, we used an interleaved melody recognition task with…

The Mobile Autism Risk Assessment (MARA) is a new, electronically administered, 7-question autism spectrum disorder (ASD) screen to triage those at highest risk for ASD. Children 16 months-17 years (N = 222) were screened during their first visit in a developmental-behavioral pediatric clinic. MARA scores were compared to diagnosis from the…

Enjoyment is a fundamental component of activity participation. This study compared leisure activity enjoyment experienced by typically developing children (TD; n = 64) and those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; n = 67) from age 6 to 13. The TD children enjoyed "formal" and "physical" activities significantly more than the…

Most individuals with autism spectrum disorders often fail in tasks of theory of mind (ToM). However, those with normal intellectual functioning known as high functioning ASD (HF-ASD) sometimes succeed in mentalizing inferences. Some tools have been developed to more accurately test their ToM abilities. The aims of this study were to examine the…

Here we examine imaginative drawing abilities in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and learning disabilities (LD) under several conditions: spontaneous production, with use of a template, and combining two real entities to form an "unreal" entity. Sixteen children in each group, matched on mental and chronological age, were…

The efficacy of a peer-mediated, theatre-based intervention on social competence in participants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was tested. Thirty 8-to-14 year-olds with ASD were randomly assigned to the treatment (n = 17) or a wait-list control (n = 13) group. Immediately after treatment, group effects were seen on social ability,…

The study examines whether "optimal outcome" (OO) children, despite no longer meeting diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), exhibit personality traits often found in those with ASD. Nine zero acquaintance raters evaluated Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) and Big Five personality traits of 22 OO individuals, 27 high…

A social skills training (SST) for high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) was evaluated in an outpatient setting using a combined between- and within-subject design in which SST and a waiting list condition were compared. According to parents and teachers, the SST produced greater improvement of social skills than the…

Motor and social difficulties are often found in children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), to varying degrees. This study investigated the extent of overlap of these problems in children aged 7-10 years who had a diagnosis of either ASD or DCD, compared to typically-developing controls.…

It is widely acknowledged that the brain anatomy of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) shows a different developmental pattern then typical age-matched peers. There is however, a paucity of studies examining gray matter in mid and late adulthood in ASD. In this cross-sectional neuroimaging study, we, performed vertex-wise…

In order to study problems of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with morphosyntax, we investigated twenty high-functioning Greek-speaking children (mean age: 6;11) and twenty age- and language-matched typically developing children on environments that allow or forbid object clitics or their corresponding noun phrase. Children with…

We studied the association between specific congenital syndromes and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in the large Finnish Register material. Our data include all children diagnosed with ASD (n = 4441) according to Finnish Hospital Discharge Register in 1987-2000. Four controls per each case were matched to sex, birthplace, date of birth (±30 days)…

Faces are one of the most socially significant visual stimuli encountered in the environment, whereas pareidolias are illusions of faces arising from ambiguous stimuli in the environment. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterised by deficits in response to social stimuli. We found that children with ASD (n = 60) identify significantly fewer…