Top Research Papers on Autism

This opening article will set the scene for the series and will explore the meanings of the word ‘autism’ and what the issues are that this series will highlight and explore.

We contend that, within capitalism, the Autism Industrial Complex (aic) produces both autism as commodity and the normative cultural logic of intervention in relation to it. Comprised of ideological/rhetorical as well as material/economic infrastructure, we argue that the aic is not the myriad businesses and industries that capitalize and profit from it; rather, these constitute its epiphenomenal features. In the production of autism as commodity, the aic also simultaneously produces that commodity’s market, its consumers, and its own monopoly control of that market through production for con...

This article reflects on how autism interacts with the Christian faith and the Church. From considerations of the lived experience of the author’s son, who has autism, tensions are noted between the two main theoretical stances which are commonly applied to autism and how this has a bearing on a ‘theology of autism’. Of these two stances, it is suggested that ‘Intense World’ theory is more useful because it treats autistic people with greater empathy; ironically, an aspect that an ‘impaired’ Theory of Mind suggests they lack. This has implications for how the Church can learn from and be enric...

It is found that child's age, child's age at the caregiver's first concerns about their development, and the child's verbal skills are key in predicting the age of autism diagnosis in Paraguay.

Evidence on the diagnosis and treatment of ASD is summarized and common early signs and symptoms of ASD in a child's first 2 years of life include no response to name when called, no or limited use of gestures in communication, and lack of imaginative play.

Abstract Autism has presented a new frontier challenging how society understands disability. This article reviews the historical contexts of disability and autism along with a brief overview of the concept of ‘identity’ within the context of disability, and how autism is understood within the medical and social models of disability considering how these models may impact autistic identity building. Neither of these models adequately encompasses the diverse autistic experience. Instead, a predicament model of autism is proposed to better understand autistic experience. This model facilitates a ...

Investigating differences in camouflaging between adults with ADHD, autism, and a comparison group in an age and sex‐matched subsample found adults with ADHD scored lower on total camouflaging, and subscales compensation and assimilation than autistic adults.

The findings suggest that the autism acceptance training program in this study, designed to increase autism knowledge and familiarity among non-autistic people, holds promise for reducing explicit but not implicit biases toward autism.

It is important to consider the child with autism as a whole and not overlook possible symptoms as part of autism, and the physician should rule out the presence of a medical condition before moving on to other interventions or therapies.

The experience of autistic people using a neurodiversity-affirming approach is described using the 'Autistic SPACE' framework, in terms of sensory needs, need for predictability, need for autistic acceptance, communication differences and how to approach them, and the benefits of a person-centred empathy-based approach to autistic people.

Emotional intelligence is a term, which includes various abilities and skills, which enable a person to perceive and handle emotional situations both his own and those of other individuals with the aim of his social and personal development. More specifically, the first part of this work presents an analysis of the role of emotional intelligence in the individual. Then, the 8 pillars of metcognition are mentioned, the role of humor in EI, taking distances with the help of EI, the correlation with hormones, the mindfulness model, the new layered model on EI, and the EI in gifted individual. In ...

A review of what is known of the visual system, refractive surgery, and ASD focuses on children with visually significant refractive errors and poor spectacle compliance, which offer the opportunity for investigation into how improved visual acuity influences ASD behaviors.

After attention was drawn in the late 1960s to the poor reproducibility of psychiatric diagnosis between clinicians, methods and procedures used to diagnose psychiatric disorders were greatly improved and progresses were made in two major directions.

While the number of astrocytes is reduced, their state of activation and their GFAP expression is increased in ASD, and disruption of astrocyte function in ASD may affect proper neurotransmitter metabolism, synaptogenesis, and the state of brain inflammation.

Prior research has studied preferences for identity- or person-first language among persons with an autism diagnosis. The current study differs from this previous body of research by specifically examining quantitative predictors of language preferences through a social identity theoretical approach, thereby leading to a better understanding of psychological and social factors that might underlie language use and preference within the autistic community. Australian adults with an autism diagnosis (N = 198) completed the measures of autism knowledge, internalised stigma, and autism identity to ...

Estimates of the prevalence of autism worldwide reveal an increase in measured autism prevalence globally, reflecting the combined effects of multiple factors including the increase in community awareness and public health response globally, progress in case identification and definition, and an increased in community capacity.

A 'rethinking' of autism as a neurodevelopmental disease that originates from early life development is promoted, focusing on the impact of the prenatal and maternal risk factors such as maternal diabetes, prenatal chemical exposure, and hormone imbalances during pregnancy on the risk for ASD development in children and offspring.

Findings to date from the APP cohort are summarized and progress made toward identifying meaningful subgroups of autism are described.

Much of the existing literature supported three preliminary findings about the nature of autistic camouflaging: adults with more self-reported autistic traits report greater engagement in camouflaging; and higher self- reported camouflaging is associated with worse mental health outcomes.

Abstract:The goal of this article is to provide a balanced assessment of the significance autism has for the scientific study of language. While linguistic profiles in autism vary greatly, spanning from a total absence of functional language to verbal levels within the typical range, the entire autism spectrum is robustly characterized by lifelong disabilities in intersubjective communication and persistent difficulties in adopting the perspective of other people. In that sense, autism constitutes a unique profile in which linguistic competence is dissociated from communication skills. Somewha...

Nitric oxide plays a key role in ASD pathology development and progression, and targeting its production leads to a reversal in the autistic phenotype, which suggests a novel treatment strategy for ASD.

The continued increase among children identified with ASD, particularly among non-White children and girls, highlights the need for enhanced infrastructure to provide equitable diagnostic, treatment, and support services for all children with ASD.

A number of quantitative results are found suggesting various autism-related and demographic differences such as diverse forms of ASD, co-occurrence of ADHD, verbal skills, and age groups, which are found in a multi-session study with multi-purposeful activities targeting the socio-emotional abilities of children in a rehabilitation setting.

The Autism Assistant platform is developed, which includes a mobile application built with Unity and a web application developed with React and Ruby on Rails that was considered suitable as educational software for special education.

The disease burden of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a definitive public health challenge. The quality of life of children with ASD depends on how the cultural environment fits their special needs, including religious and spiritual factors. Does ASD predict low religiosity, and if not, what is the significance for clinical care? To answer this question, we reviewed the literature on the cognitive models of ASD and religious beliefs. We found that the cognitive models of ASD and religious beliefs substantially overlap, which is particularly important from a developmental psychological perspe...

Autism, more precisely, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex of neurological conditions that affect a person's socialization, communication, and behavior, characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication.

The findings support the use of the ABC as a valid screening measure for ASD cases, and it may promote the use of the ABC for clinical and research purposes among Arabic-speaking communities.

There was a fivefold increase in how often articles talked about community involvement – from about 10% before the rule to over 50% after, and it is promising that more community involvement is reported, researchers need to describe this involvement more clearly.

Despite limitations of a single site study, modest sample size and limits to generalisability, autism sibling recurrence in family history infants may be higher in mid‐childhood than in studies reporting diagnostic outcome at 3 years.

I suggest that the current study of autism is problematic, due to: (1) its failure to pursue a medical model of disease causation, with protocols for differential diagnoses of causes; (2) a notable incidence of unrecognized false positive diagnoses in children; (3) the conceptual equating of autism with sets of traits that have been shown to be genetically and phenotypically unrelated to one another; and (4) the expansion of use of the terms “autism” and “autism traits” to psychiatric conditions that have no substantive etiological or symptomatic overlap with autism. These problems can be alle...

The hypothesis that in-utero exposure to DES and also other synthetic estrogens and progestogens, which all are endocrine disruptors, contributes to the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders, especially ASD is strengthened.

The language used to refer to autism has been a topic of ongoing debate. Research in English-speaking countries indicated an overall preference for identity-first language (‘autistic person’) among autistic adults rather than person-first language (‘person with autism’). We examined terminology preference in Dutch autistic adults (n = 1026; 16–84 years; 57% women) and parents of autistic children (n = 286) via an online survey. A majority of self-reporting adults with autism (68.3%) and parents (82.5%) demonstrated a person-first language preference. A younger age, higher IQ and more autistic ...

There is a lack of validated tools for accurately identifying mood problems in individuals with autism, who may present with ‘atypical’ features (e.g. severe irritability), and current therapeutic approaches are based on recommendations for primary mood disorders, with little reference to the neurobiological/cognitive differences associated with autism.

The current epistemology of autism as a phenotype derives from the consistency of historical accounts and decades of work within the tradition of descriptive epidemiology, culminating in current categorical descriptions within DSM and ICD nosologies and the concept of “prototypical autism.” The demonstrated high heritability of this phenotype has led to an essentialist theory of autism as a biological entity and the concerted search within the developmental brain and genetic science for discrete biological markers. This search has not revealed simple markers explaining autistic outcomes and ha...

Most autistic individuals show improved communication and social functioning as they age, but not all do; Trajectory group membership is correlated with socioeconomic status, and future research should investigate what drives these correlations.

In this Papers Podcast, Professor Jonathan Green discusses his CAMH journal Debate paper ‘Debate: Neurodiversity, autism and healthcare’. This podcast coincides with World Autism Acceptance Week.

Introduction While not all autism research is ableism, autism researchers can be ableist, including by talking about autistic people in sub-human terms (dehumanization), treating autistic people like objects (objectification), and making othering statements which set autistic people apart from non-autistic people, and below in status (stigmatization). Method This mixed-method study aimed to investigate how autism researchers construct autistic people and autism research, and to investigate whether including autistic people more in research relates to lower ableism in narratives about autistic ...

The Mexican version of the CARS is a valid and reliable instrument for diagnosing autism in children and adolescents using DSM-IV and DSM-5 criteria.

Males are around three times more likely to possess an autism diagnosis than females. For years this was explained by accounts that considered the male gender more compatible with the autistic phenotype. However, new research suggests that a lack of understanding and recognition of the female autistic phenotype, and a predisposition to associate males with autistic traits, could lead to structural inequalities that hinder the identification of autistic females. To explore how autism and gender are more widely perceived, the present study tested implicit and explicit associations between autism...

It is suggested that the large suite of traits associated with autism can be usefully conceptualized under the single rubric of “pattern,” a term that connects autism with basic brain and cognitive functions and structures its phenotypes within a single theoretical framework.

Background Fictional portrayals of autism play a role in raising awareness, shaping knowledge, and influencing attitudes toward autism. However, the accuracy of these portrayals is a topic of debate. Limited research has been conducted with the autism community regarding their perceptions of fictional portrayals of autism. This study aimed to explore autistic people's perceptions of the accuracy, educational benefits, and impact of Atypical, a Netflix comedy drama series focused on the experiences of an autistic protagonist. Methods Participants were 77 members of the autism community (autis...

A comprehensive outlook that acknowledges impairments, capabilities, co‐occurring conditions, and environmental factors would be useful for identifying subgroups of individuals as well as for determining individual needs and strengths in clinical assessments.

Difficulties in various face processing tasks have been well documented in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Several meta‐analyses and numerous case–control studies have indicated that this population experiences a moderate degree of impairment, with a small percentage of studies failing to detect any impairment. One possible account of this mixed pattern of findings is heterogeneity in face processing abilities stemming from the presence of a subpopulation of prosopagnosic individuals with ASD alongside those with normal face processing skills. Samples randomly drawn from such a population, esp...

This multi-tissue study demonstrates the utility of examining DNA methylation prior to ASD diagnosis and evaluates enrichment of ASD-associated DNAmethylation for known ASD- associated genes.

The reasons why recognition of autism is important and the positive impacts of recognising and understanding autism on health outcomes, service delivery and patient experience are set out.

A model of “high opioid tone” autism is shown and studies that could be conducted to both prevent and treat this form of autism are suggested.

A Research Passport that autism researchers and autistic adults could use to support the inclusion of autistic adults as research participants and was useful in promoting empathetic autism research.

Autism spectrum disorder testing practices vary widely by site and differ by race and presence of co-occurring intellectual disability, suggesting opportunities to standardise and/or improve autism spectrum disorder identification practices.

ABSTRACT This article discusses a unique form of withdrawal observed in children with ASD, using a detailed case study. This withdrawal can be understood as linked to a psychotic organisation, in addition to the autistic aspects and early developmental difficulties in the sense of self. A child on the spectrum with psychosis makes for a unique case, because the psychosis rests on an early developmental impairment. In such cases, a fragile self uses disintegration of the mind as a mechanism that enables blurring of the self. This defence mechanism is different from Tustin’s ideas about the auti...

The current paper gives a brief description of the relationship of biomarkers with autistic spectrum disorder, discusses autism, study the biomarkers which can be traced by medical tests, their association with the triggering of autistic behaviors, and how the regulation and balance of these biomarkers could reduce the autistic symptoms.