Top Research Papers on Autism

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 ...

With the purpose of helping in the understanding of, and avoiding possible misunderstandings of, so‐called seemingly autistic conditions in children, a discussion of published literatures and the author's own case materials is presented.

The assumption that autistic individuals do not have the theory of mind – the social-cognitive ability to understand other people by attributing mental states to them – has been widespread in the psychological literature. However, the empirical evidence from the original research and its replications failed to prove and support autistic mind-blindness. Yet, it is still present in literature on autism spectrum. Meanwhile, convincing research, that has been conducted among autistic researchers and their allies, is often overlooked by non-autistic specialists. This paper focuses on how autistic a...

This paper will review the literature to date summarizing the results of linkage, cytogenetic, and candidate gene studies with a focus on recent progress, and promising avenues for future research are considered.

The cause of autism, termed by Eugen Bleuler in 1911, has not been elucidated to this day. A scientific and logical approach can be utilized to eliminate potential causes and consider ideas not thought of before. Therefore, it is proposed that literary creativity is in fact the causative agent of autism and that a biological cause of autism will never be found. This notion is substantiated through its very unscientific early history and verified with observations made by both Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger. Without a mechanism of pathology, it is suggested that perception plays a major role in b...

Resumo O autismo é um transtorno fortemente genético, com uma herdabilidade estimada de mais de 90%. Uma combinação de heterogeneidade fenotípica e o provável envolvimento de múltiplos loci que interagem entre si dificultam os esforços de descobertas de genes. Conseqüentemente, a etiologia genética dos transtornos relacionados ao autismo permanece, em grande parte, desconhecida. Nos últimos anos, a convergência entre tecnologias genômicas em rápido avanço, a finalização do projeto genoma humano e os crescentes e exitosos esforços em colaboração para aumentar o número de pacientes disponíveis p...

Resumo O autismo é um transtorno de neurodesenvolvimento com diversas apresentações clínicas. Essas apresentações variam em gravidade (leves a graves) e são denominadas transtornos do espectro do autismo. O sinal mais comum aos transtornos desse espectro é o déficit de interação social, que está associado a déficits de comunicação verbal e não-verbal e a comportamentos estereotipados e repetitivos. Graças a estudos recentes que utilizam métodos de imagem cerebral, os cientistas obtiveram uma idéia melhor dos circuitos neurais envolvidos nos transtornos do espectro do autismo. De fato, os exame...

Data suggest an abnormal functioning of the social brain network in autism, and the understanding of the functional alterations of this important mechanism may drive the elaboration of new and more adequate social re-educative strategies for autistic patients.

This series of articles will explore the neurodivergent condition of autism from a range of different perspectives. This second article will explore the history of, and diagnostic issues relating to, autism.

Background: While many autistics report feelings of excessive empathy, their experience is not reflected by most of the current literature, which typically, but not always, suggests that autism is characterized by intact emotional empathy and reduced cognitive empathy. To try and bridge this gap in empirical findings and with respect to individuals' experiences, we examined a novel conceptualization of empathy termed empathic disequilibrium, i.e., the imbalance between emotional and cognitive empathy. Empathic disequilibrium was previously found to predict autistic traits in non-autistic pop...

This presentation gives a critical reflection regarding the production of knowledge within autism studies.

Both total number of DSM-IV symptoms and number of social symptoms distinguished the autism and nonautism subgroups, and the two subgroups displayed similar levels of communication impairments and repetitive or stereotyped behavior.

It seems that the etiology explanation from parents` point of view is connected with nature-nurture problem, which is very important for parents of autistic children to find some explanation for their child`s developmental disorder.

Outcome in autistic-like conditions is even more variable, ranging from excellent in many cases ofSo-called Asperger syndrome to gloomy in most cases of so-called disintegrative disorders.

challenges presented in our current historical context and the enterprise of psychoanalytic education. Britzman’s discourse is highly specialized and presents the reader who may not be familiar with both disciplines the challenge of learning a new vocabulary. As a psychoanalyst, I was introduced to the academic language of a person who is extremely well versed in educational theory with its attendant history, concepts, terminology and phraseology. Familiar psychoanalytic writings take on new meaning when seen through the hermeneutic lens of a different discipline, and this was particularly rew...

This paper shows how an autistic child monitored at a day hospital reaches a symptomatic construction in language, which enables him to adapt to the world whilst leaving open the question of going beyond the autistic position.

This Thesis is a theoretical attempt to analyze the emergence of Autism as a discourse and, through it, the emergence of the Autistic Subjectivity. My primary aim is to create a kind of history of the different modes by which autistic persons become subjects. I am following a post-structuralist methodology, based on Michel Foucault’s work on the birth of psychiatry and institutions, his analysis of power relations, his ideas on the objectification and subjectification of the individual, and finally his notions of governmentality and bio-power. More specifically, I am making use of the Foucauld...

The findings from this study showed that family involvement in the lives of children with ASD cannot be overemphasised and an easy way to help everyone in the family is to improve familial support, marriages, and social involvement.

To an individual with autism, a face is often just an ordinary object, but an ordinary object is often far from ordinary. Every ordinary object has the potential to take on extraordinary meaning, while every face has the potential to lose all its meaning. In this sense, watching a film, with all its faces, its subtext, its symbolic meaning, requires rethinking of that film experience for the individual with autism. This thesis project report and the short, experimental film it references are framed within that re-thinking. The film is designed specifically with an autistic audience in mind. Th...

A multiloci epistatic model involved in the causation of autism have emerged from a number of geneticalclinical, cytogenetics and molecular studies done in recent years.

This study investigated the attachment behaviors in children with autism. Ten boys with autism, 10 boys with Down syndrome and 10 boys with typical development who were around 4 years old, participated in the study. A free-play session, which consisted of five episodes, was used to observe the interactive behaviors between the child and the mother, and also an unfamiliar person (the stranger). No significant differences were found among the three groups concerning most of the attachment behaviors. However, the children with autism presented a higher frequency of avoidant behavior, only in the ...

Autists count differently when compared with typically developing individuals. Autists differ from typically developing individuals in their counting skills by a slower reaction time when naming quantities, a later development of sequencing skills and recalling positions and no benefit from recognizing a canonical placement of dots. In this thesis the typical development of number knowledge, especially counting skills, and the model of working memory is discussed and adapted to explain the autistic number learning. The three major theories about autism: disabilities in theory of mind, executiv...

Abstract There are many different perspectives for understanding autism. These perspectives may each convey different levels of stigma for autistic individuals. This qualitative study aimed to understand how autistic individuals make sense of their own autism and experience the stigma attached to autism. The study used critical grounded theory tools. Participants (N = 20) discussed autism as central to their identity, and integral to who they are. While participants thought of autism as value neutral, they expressed how society confers negative meanings onto autism, and thus, them. The finding...

Autism science faces several conceptual and ethical challenges. These include fundamental issues such as how to characterize autism and the fact that research findings and how they are interpreted sometimes contribute to negative perceptions of autistic people. We argue that some of these challenges can be addressed by centering the perspectives of autistic people and focus on one way to accomplish this: having non-autistic researchers critically engage with personal accounts of autistic experience. We discuss some of the advantages and challenges of engaging with these accounts and argue that...

A large body of research showed that autistic people have intact emotional (affective) empathy alongside reduced cognitive empathy. However, there are mixed findings and these call for a more subtle understanding of empathy in autism. Empathic disequilibrium refers to the imbalance between emotional and cognitive empathy and is associated with a higher number of autistic traits in the typical population. Here we examined whether empathic disequilibrium predicts both the number of autistic traits and autism diagnosis. In a large sample of autistic (N = 1905) and typical individuals (N = 3009), ...

The aim of this study was to test whether there is a difference between the parents of autistic and those of typically developing children (TDC) on AQ scores in a Turkish sample.

Monique Botha felt nauseous reading these descriptions. Botha had dug up these papers several years ago as background for a master’s thesis at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. Botha was investigating why people with autism have a high incidence of mental health problems—and hypothesized that stigma had something to do with it. Botha was diagnosed with autism at age 19 and thought that having the condition provided an important perspective as a member of the group being studied. But in diving into the scienti!c literature on the topic, Botha realized the !eld su"ered from some fu...

This study highlights the different noxae involved in the etiopathogenesis of AD and the percentage that every biological factor has in the development of the autistic phenotype and confirms that AD corresponds to an atypical behavioural phenotype expression of a cerebral dysfunction with heterogeneous etiology.

Results from a semi-structured questionnaire survey of development and behaviour in boys with fragile X syndrome, Down's syndrome and learning disability of unknown aetiology provide further support for the notion of a behavioural phenotype inboys with fragileX syndrome.

The authors may not be able to make you love reading, but autistic children the nature and treatment of childhood autism will lead you to love reading starting from now.

Recursive Feature Elimination and Stability Selection methods that consider important attributes for target class were proposed and verified the combining of feature selection method and machine learning algorithm within the frame of accuracy, sensitivity and specificity evaluation metrics.

ABSTRACT This paper explores psychoanalytic ideas about autism, through vignettes from a long-term psychotherapy of an autistic adolescent who had developed an obsessive passion for photographing his world. The use of an autistic object will be explored here, as well as the change that occurred in the context of this therapy in the use of the object – from being a sensuous shelter and pseudo-protection from the world, to becoming a bridge to it, a vehicle for building a mind and a container for the patient’s experiences. The paper also examines the overall development of the patient, moving fr...

Both common and rare genetic variation that may increase the genetic susceptibility for ASD are identified.

Heta Pukki, MEd, MSc, Jorn Bettin, Avery Grey Outlaw, Joshua Hennessy, MA, Kabie Brook, Martijn Dekker, Mary Doherty, MB ChB FCARCSI, Sebastian C.K. Shaw, BM BS, MSc, PhD, PGCert, DRCOG, MAcadMEd, FHEA, Jo Bervoets, MS, Silke Rudolph, Thibault Corneloup, MS, Kylieanne Derwent, Onemoo Lee, Yadira Garcia Rojas, Wenn Lawson, PhD, Monica Vidal Gutierrez, Kosjenka Petek, Myria Tsiakkirou, Annikka Suoninen, PhD, Jo Minchin, Rainer Döhle, Silke Lipinski, MA, Heini Natri, PhD, Emma Reardon, Giovanna Villarreal Estrada, Ovidiu Platon, Nick Chown, PhD, Ayaya Satsuki, PhD, Damian Milton, PhD, MA, PGCert,...

The findings suggest that, even though no particular differences in sleep architecture were found between the two groups of children with autism, those who experienced regression showed more sleep disorders and a disruption of sleep either from a macro‐ or microstructural viewpoint.

Abst rac t Autism is a long-life disorder that affects not only the autistic child but also the family caregivers. There is increasing recognition about the importance of taking into account both child and family needs when treating autism. However it has been a major debate about what intervention is the most appropriate. In this paper we will review the current literature on the different interventions that have been used in the treatment of autism with special attention to those that are empirically based. It is not our objective to discuss in detail any particular intervention. We intend t...

The preliminary findings suggest that there are different linguistic and communication function profiles in the different populations compared.

The increase in prevalence might indicate a true increase in incidence, but most of the increase can be accounted for by changes in case-finding methods and diagnostic criteria, and by differences in sample sizes, and the age range and intellectual ability of the populations studied.

In an effort to clear up its fickle symptomatology, a review of the most important authors and the main emergent lines of research in the scientific production are presented, as well as its prevalence and etiopathogeny.

The author has designed a toy to help treat autistic children, while the toy design helps to alleviate the symptoms of autistic children to a certain extent, and provides some ideas for future therapeutic equipment design for autistic children.

The main theme of this study is how the media addresses the issue of individuals with autism, their problems, and needs through the media.

Evidence for the presence of prenatal and perinatal factors, gastrointestinal factors, food allergies, metabolic and heavy metal factors, and other nutritional factors that may represent risk factors for the development of autism and autistic spectrum disorder are reviewed.

Part 1 Underlying principles: the relationship between mental retardation, autism and autistic-like conditions. Part 2 Research on the population of a clinic for the mentally retarded: general profile of the entire group of children admitted to the observation home comparison of the children in the study with and without a pervasive developmental disorder problems with classification and diagnosis in everyday clinical practice aspects of management and treatment of mentally retarded children with a PDD how do mentally retarded children with a PDD fare after discharge from the observation home?...

There is no increased signal reverberation in autism, despite the known presence of excitation-to-inhibition imbalances, and this finding indicates one potential way in which the explanations of the two conditions might differ.

Although occipital spikes are commonly seen in young children as an age‐dependent EEG‐defined benign focal epilepsy, their high frequency in this population with cognitive difficulties suggests a possible causal relation.

Autism, a general developmental disorder, affects the necessary skills to a proper growth and social interaction and begins to deserve special attention from health professionals with an increasing prevalence.

In this paper the authors try to provide a constructionist review with regards to the autistic subjectivity. Placing autism in a historical terrain, they use ideas stemming from social constructionism in order to examine the core subject of this paper that is the way autism has been treated in psychoanalytic discourse. The authors examine the evolution of psychoanalytic ideas making inferrences on the wider social context surrounding autism and psychoanalysis.

There was considerable overlap between the views and experiences of the autistic parents in this study and the largely non-autistic parent samples in previous research; parents emphasised the importance of being open and honest about the diagnosis, disclosing the diagnosis as early as possible, individualising discussions to children’s needs and framing the diagnosis positively.

After presenting the psychoanalytic definition of the voice and the role it plays in the subject as a drive object, this paper attempts to define autism. In metapsychological terms, autism presents clinically as an active refusal of the other’s voice and of its offer to imprint, through words, in the area of language and speech. This refusal is a basic choice to not be alienated by the other’s voice. The autistic subject, for whom the other’s presence is excessive, remains, as is demonstrated clinically, a prisoner of sound and thus finds difficulty in accessing speech. Based on this theory, t...

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 ...