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Spectrum: Autism Research News

Tag: attention

August 2013

Clinical research: Executive function aids autism outcome

by  /  9 August 2013

Children and adolescents who outgrow an autism diagnosis as they get older show abilities within the average range for executive function, according to a study published 3 June in Child Neuropsychology. 

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July 2013

Exploring sleep in children with autism

by ,  /  30 July 2013

Many children with autism have problems with sleep, which can worsen symptoms of the disorder. A better understanding of sleep in autism may help reveal the mechanisms of autism and point to potential treatments, say Ruth O’Hara and Michelle Primeau.

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Clinical research: Attention deficit adds to autism tantrums

by  /  26 July 2013

Children who meet the criteria for both autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have more severe behavioral problems than do children with either disorder alone, according to three studies published in the past few months.

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Clinical research: Autism, language impairment are unique

by  /  5 July 2013

Children with autism have similar language deficits to those who have specific language impairment, but are better at seeing the details in a scene, according to a study published 15 May in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. The results support the idea that the two disorders resemble each other only superficially.

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June 2013

Virtual public speaking assesses social attention in autism

by  /  12 June 2013

To study attention in people with autism during complex social situations, researchers have developed a virtual reality version of public speaking, according to a study published 20 May in Autism Research.

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May 2013

Cognition and behavior: People with autism don’t avoid faces

by  /  31 May 2013

When choosing whether to look at a face or an object, children with autism generally pick the same thing controls do, according to a study published 10 April in Frontiers in Psychiatry. The finding contradicts the widely held belief that people with autism tend not to look at faces.  

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Cognition and behavior: Autism brains normalize over time

by  /  17 May 2013

Differences in brain activity that distinguish children with autism from controls may lessen with age, according to a meta-analysis published in the March issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

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Photograph of a father measuring his daughter’s height against a doorway.

Long-term studies track how autism changes with age

by  /  13 May 2013

A handful of long-term studies, each including up to several hundred participants, have followed people with autism for close to two decades. As the children in some of these studies come of age, researchers are piecing together the disorder’s trajectories.

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April 2013

Suicidal thoughts

by  /  23 April 2013

Children with autism are more likely to attempt suicide than their typical peers are, particularly if they are depressed or living in low-income families, says a January study in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders.

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March 2013

Cognition and behavior: Gaze related to language ability

by  /  22 March 2013

Children with both autism and language impairment have similar trouble suppressing their reflexes and avoiding distractions during a visual task compared with language-impaired children without autism, according to a study published in the January issue of Developmental Science.

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