The gene, FOXP1, influences an animal’s motivation to listen to social communication, a new study suggests.

The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) accurately flags autistic toddlers, a new systematic review and meta-analysis suggests, contrary to past evidence that the tool’s validity varies depending on a child’s age and traits. Experts weigh in on the discrepancy.

The power struggle between researchers, autistic self-advocates and parents is threatening progress across the field.

Applied behavior analysis, the most common intervention for children diagnosed with autism, is the subject of an intense debate between practitioners and neurodiversity advocates.

A standard questionnaire can help identify social (pragmatic) communication disorder more readily in school-age children.

Theofanopoulou shares how flamenco stepped up the pace of her social-communication research, and what’s behind the ‘no fear’ ethos in her new lab.

Interview techniques that cater to a range of communication abilities can elicit the perspectives of autistic youth with cognitive and verbal challenges.

Shifts in diagnostic criteria have only added to the condition’s bedeviling heterogeneity, an analysis of smiling, sitting, walking and other early milestones in more than 17,000 autistic children reveals.

Increased white-matter maturation tracks with stronger language abilities later in childhood, but the relationship with cortical thickness is less clear.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published the first repository of vocalizations from minimally verbal autistic people. Those with few or no spoken words still produce a range of phonemes, or units of sound, that may serve as developmental markers or intervention targets.