People with autism aren’t the only ones who struggle to assume the perspective of others. Typical young people who are socially adept have good spatial skills — but only when asked to see things from the perspective of human-like objects.

The brains of teenagers with autism and their unaffected siblings respond similarly to both happy and neutral faces, whereas those of controls seem to prefer happy ones, according to a study published 12 July in Translational Psychiatry.

Including more females in autism research studies will aid the search for genetic and environmental susceptibility factors for the disorder, says genetic psychiatrist Lauren Weiss.

Children who have more than one older sibling with autism have a one in three chance of developing the disorder themselves, according to a study published today in Pediatrics. The risk is higher for boys: Even if they have only one older sibling with autism, they are almost three times more likely than girls with the same family history to develop the disorder.

Memory is a notoriously unreliable guide, and this is especially true when strong emotions are involved. So it’s not surprising that parents of children with autism tend to recall the exact onset of their child’s symptoms with something less than accuracy.

Toddlers with autism are less likely to use gestures to communicate than are typically developing children and those with developmental delay or specific language impairment.

A complicated interplay between a certain genetic variant and autism, schizophrenia and rheumatoid arthritis adds one more intriguing correlation to the growing list of autism risk factors.

Autism studies tend to focus on one part of the spectrum, often excluding those who also have other conditions such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder or intellectual disability. The result, some experts say, is piecemeal findings that don’t fit together to generate a whole picture.

A new technique allows researchers to make stable modifications to neurons by incorporating modified amino acids into the proteins of stem cells. The method permits researchers to investigate neuronal function in live, intact cells.

Genetic variants in two autism-associated genes have been linked to repetitive behavior and hyperactivity, two common symptoms of the disorder, according to two studies published in the past few months.