Poor metaphor comprehension was considered a hallmark of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but recent research has questioned the extent and the sources of these difficulties. In this cross-sectional study, we compared metaphor comprehension in individuals with ASD (N = 29) and individuals with typical development (TD; N = 31), and investigated the…

Variations in prompt delay procedures are used in discrete-trial training to reduce the occurrence of errors before task mastery. However, the variations are seldom compared systematically. Using an adapted alternating treatments design, the present study compared progressive prompt delay with 2-s or 5-s constant prompt delay, on the acquisition…

This study evaluates the feasibility of the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (NIH-TCB) for use in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). 116 autistic children and adolescents and 80 typically developing (TD) controls, ages 3-17 years, completed four NIH-TCB tasks related to inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, processing speed, and episodic memory.…

Performance on a single executive function (EF) task (e.g., a card sorting task) is often taken to represent ability on the underlying subcomponent of EF (e.g., set shifting) without accounting for the non-specific and non-executive skills employed to complete the task. This study used a manualised battery of EF tasks to derive individual task…

The present study evaluates the test-retest reliability of six theory of mind (ToM) tasks that measured cognitive, affective, and spontaneous ToM in 7 to 11 year-old children with autism spectrum disorder. Our results revealed considerable variation in test-retest reliability depending on the type of ToM task, which ranged from poor to good with…

Children with autism are characterized by milestones in joint attention (JA) skill. They fail to understand the directional cue issued by a partner (during social communication), which often results in them reciprocating inappropriately and not completing the JA bid successfully. The directional cues can be gaze-pointing, finger-pointing, etc.,…

This study investigated whether young adults with ASD (n = 29) had impairments in Cognitive Empathy (CE), Affective Empathy (AE) or Empathic Accuracy (EA; the ability to track changes in others' thoughts and feelings) compared to typically-developing individuals (n = 31) using the Empathic Accuracy Task (EAT), which involves watching narrators…