How easy it is to engage the attention of a child with autism by gazing or pointing at an object may predict how well he or she will be able to function as an adult, according to a study published in the February issue of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

A detailed brain imaging study of people with Williams syndrome, a developmental disorder characterized by a highly sociable personality, has found a series of structural, functional and connectivity deficits that converge on a part of the brain called the insula. The findings were published online 12 March in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mutations in more than 100 autism-associated genes lead to shared neurobiological deficits in mice, including alterations in the shape of their brains and changes to the electrical properties of neurons, according to a study published 20 February in Molecular Autism.

A new study suggests that children with both autism and gastrointestinal disorders have poorer language and social skills than those with autism alone.

When children with autism make grammatical errors, is it due to a fundamental problem in language processing, or rather their difficulty understanding social interactions? Two new studies lend support to the latter idea.

Children with autism activate more brain regions than controls do when listening to tonal inflections in speech that convey meaning. The findings were published 19 December in Child Neuropsychology.

Minority children tend to show more severe symptoms of autism early on, regardless of social class.

Children with autism who have different verbal and intellectual abilities seem to glean useful social information from different parts of the face, according to the largest-ever eye-tracking study of the disorder. The findings are published in the March issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

The French documentary Le Mur (The Wall) shows that many psychoanalysts in France shun biological explanations for autism.

Foreign-language translations of autism screening and diagnostic instruments are proliferating, but there is little research evaluating how well they work. Validation is necessary not only to ensure that children who have autism get the services they need, but also to accurately measure the disorder’s prevalence in different countries, researchers say.