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.
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.
Infants with fragile X syndrome spend more time looking at a toy before switching their attention elsewhere than do healthy controls, according to a study published 1 July in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Only a fraction of autism studies use the gold standard tests to diagnose the disorder in study participants.
Mothers of children with autism are rated by their husbands as rigid and inflexible whereas fathers are viewed by their wives as aloof. Perhaps these qualities are reinforced by the challenges of raising a child with the disorder?
A new study of twins proposes the controversial claim that environmental influences during early development are just as, if not more, important than genetics. But the findings are not substantially different from those of previous twin studies, however, and some experts are critical of the study’s statistics.
Children who express a subset of genes — including one located in the autism-associated chromosomal region 16p11.2 — at higher or lower levels than normal benefit from treatment with the antipsychotic drug risperidone, according to a study published 7 June in the Pharmacogenomics Journal.
A new study shows that women with high-functioning autism appear better able to camouflage their symptoms, perhaps because they are more self-aware than men with the disorder.
The symptoms of Asperger syndrome look slightly different in girls than in boys, according to a new study. However, gender differences in autism are poorly understood, and the results are preliminary, say other researchers.