It is essential to recognize the strengths and talents of autistic individuals. Previous studies of extraordinary talents (i.e. skills that stand out relative to the general population) have combined individuals with different skills (e.g. calendrical calculation, drawing) into one group. There has been limited investigation of talents in specific…

This study aimed to compare cognitive and memory abilities between older adults with and without autism over the age of 50. Twenty-eight individuals with autism and 29 typically developing (TD) older adults took part in the current study. Participants' cognitive and memory abilities were assessed by WAIS-IV and WMS-IV. Older autistic adults were…

A common example of social differences in autism spectrum disorder is poor modulation of reciprocal gaze, including reduced duration of eye contact and difficulty detecting the aim of another's gaze. It remains unclear, however, whether such differences are specific to the social domain, or are instead indicative of broader alterations in…

Although people with autism are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, there is little theoretical or practical effort to determine whether traditional pre-employment assessments unfairly impact autistic job seekers. Due to the lack of emphasis on social communication, game-based assessments (GBAs) may offer a way of…

A novel battery (BAFE; Valeri et al. 2015) was used in order to assess three executive function (EF) abilities (working memory, inhibition and shifting) in a sample of 27 intellectually able preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with 27 typically developing children matched on age and nonverbal IQ. Differences in EF skills were…

Children with autism spectrum disorder from low-income, minority families or those with limited English proficiency are diagnosed at a later age, or not at all, compared with their more advantaged peers. The Developmental Check-In is a new tool that could potentially be used to screen for autism that uses pictures to illustrate target behaviors.…

Typically developing (TD) adults are able to extract global information from natural images and to categorize them within a single glance. This study aimed at extending these findings to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using a free description open-encoding paradigm. Participants were asked to freely describe what they saw when…

Research on visual local and global perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is incomplete in young children. We investigated 35 three-year-old siblings of children with ASD, either diagnosed (n = 12) or not diagnosed (n = 23) with ASD as well as 14 controls with typical development and with no family history of ASD. Data from the local tasks…

The next several pages are intended as a "Commentary" on the six target articles bundled together as a Special Issue of the "Journal of Cognition and Development"--literature reviews and research reports all intended to "build bridges" between the study of cognitive development in typical and atypical populations.

We investigated whether low-functioning children with autism generalise labels from colour photographs based on sameness of shape, colour, or both. Children with autism and language-matched controls were taught novel words paired with photographs of unfamiliar objects, and then sorted pictures and objects into two buckets according to whether or…

Central coherence refers to an in-built propensity to form meaningful links over a wide range of stimuli and to generalize over as wide a range of contexts as possible. In children with autism this ability is diminished, and the impact of central coherence deficits in children with autism have previously been observed using static measures of…

Cognitive deficits in working memory (WM) are characteristic features of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and autism. However, few studies have investigated cognitive deficits using a wide range of cognitive measures. We compared children with ADHD ("n" = 49) and autism ("n" = 33) with a demographically matched…

This study broadly examines executive (EF) and visuo-motor function in 30 adolescent and adult individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in comparison to 28 controls matched for age, gender, and IQ. ASD individuals showed impaired spatial working memory, whereas planning, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition were spared.…

It has been suggested that children with nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD) or Asperger's Syndrome (AS) may show difficulties with executive functioning. There were 3 groups in this study who completed a neuropsychological battery of visual-spatial, executive functioning, and reasoning tasks; AS (n = 37), NLD (n = 31), and controls…

In autism spectrum disorders, results of cognitive testing inform clinical care, theories of neurodevelopment, and research design. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children and the Stanford-Binet are commonly used in autism spectrum disorder evaluations and scores from these tests have been shown to be highly correlated in typically developing…