Tweaking a common test of spatial reasoning could help people with autism build social skills, according to unpublished research presented Monday at the 2011 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Non-verbal children with autism show structural differences in key language areas of the brain compared with controls, according to a poster presented Saturday at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Children with autism who receive intensive behavioral interventions of various types show the most improvement on tests of social and communicative abilities, according to a study in the January-March 2012 issue of Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Over the past 30 years, autism research pioneer Fred Volkmar says he has learned that researchers should be humble when assigning meaning to autism behavior, and seek to translate their findings into useful applications.  

Individuals who have autism and dysmorphology comprise a distinct subgroup within the disorder, says geneticist Judith Miles. 

A $10 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation is funding a five-year project to develop new technologies that can help clinicians diagnose and treat autism.

A new study finds that preschool teachers can help improve social skills in 2- to 5-year-old children with autism by modeling behaviors such as showing and pointing, and enthusiastically responding when children mimic these behaviors.

A new study finds that Dutch children picked up by the police for minor offenses score higher than controls on a questionnaire measuring traits of autism.

Researchers have optimized an early social screening questionnaire to distinguish autism from other developmental disabilities in preschool-aged children.

An adventure story about a boy with autism is making an appearance in a popular comic book.