Adapting the hospital environment to suit the needs of children with autism can cut down how long the children spend there and how often they return, suggests a study in the 2012 issue of Autism Research and Treatment.

A subset of questions on two behavioral screens can distinguish children with autism from those with other developmental disorders, according to a study published 23 August in Autism.

Despite the growing number of young adults with autism, few studies have looked at how best to support these teens as they transition into adulthood.

Parents of minority children with autism are more likely to report that their children have poor quality of care than are parents of minority children with other developmental disabilities.

Among siblings of children with autism, those with better prefrontal cortex functioning — observable as relatively strong executive functions for their age — are better able to compensate for atypicalities in other brain systems early in life, and are therefore less likely to receive a diagnosis of autism later in their development, argues Mark H. Johnson.

Research into the ability of children with autism to imitate has produced contradictory results: Some studies find that those with the disorder have difficulty imitating people, whereas others find no problems. A new study explores why.

Nearly all children diagnosed with autism retain their diagnosis when screened again at 8 years of age, according to a population-based study of more than 1,000 children, published in June in the Journal of Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics.

Early intensive behavioral therapy could save more than a million dollars over the lifetime of an individual with autism.

Children who receive a combination of melatonin and behavioral therapy fall asleep faster and have better sleep quality than those who get either treatment alone or those on placebo, according to a study published 22 May in the Journal of Sleep Research.

Repetitive behaviors are often motivated by anxiety when children with autism and intellectual disability transition from one task to the next, but they are linked to a desire for attention when the children have free time, according to a study published in May in the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities.