Tele-assessment of autism in early childhood has increased. However, it is unclear how autism screening tools (M-CHAT-R, DCI) function as part of tele-assessment and relate to a commonly used tele-assessment instrument, the TAP. 361 families from a clinically referred sample of children (mean age: 27.63 months, sd = 4.86 months) completed the…

Purpose: An official autism diagnosis is required to access timely intervention and is associated with better long-term wellbeing and mental health. Certain demographic characteristics, such as being female or a racially or ethnically minoritized youth, have been associated with significant diagnostic lag. However, it remains unclear how assigned…

Play, in particular sex-typical play, is important for affective, cognitive, and social development. There is limited research on sex-typical play in autistic children. The few prior studies on this topic relied heavily on reports or involvement of caregivers/parents, did not assess cognitive abilities, and examined a limited number of sex-typical…

Introduction: Mental health concerns have been noted to be highly prevalent for youth with intellectual disability (ID), with or without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of the current study was to examine a Canadian sample of youth with ID, with or without ASD, to explore caregiver-reported percentages, predictors, and treatment…

This study examined whether autistic people with siblings score higher on measures of empathy than those without siblings. Cohorts of autistic children (n = 939; mean age = 7.35 years (SD = 2.15)) and autistic adults (n = 736; mean age = 37 years (SD = 12.39)) from the Cambridge Autism Research Database (CARD) were each divided into two groups:…

This report provides updated prevalence estimates for diagnosed autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, and other developmental delay among children 3-17 years from the 2019-2021 National Health Interview Survey, with differences in prevalence examined between years and by sex, age group, and race and Hispanic origin. Estimates are also…

Purpose: Social anhedonia is a transdiagnostic trait that reflects reduced pleasure from social interaction. It has historically been associated with autism, however, very few studies have directly examined behavioral symptoms of social anhedonia in autistic youth. We investigated rates of social anhedonia in autistic compared to non-autistic…

Sensory differences are highly prevalent in autistic individuals. However, few studies have compared their presentation between autistic males and autistic females. We used psychophysics to assess and compare tactile perceptual sensitivity between autistic and non-autistic boys and girls aged between 8 and 12 years of age. While there were…

Statistical learning (SL), the ability to detect and extract regularities from inputs, has been considered as an early-maturing and domain-general mechanism that is critical for typical language development. However, recent evidence in neurotypical adults and children have found that individuals can vary in their SL abilities across linguistic and…

Autistic children's play has routinely been determined to deviate from accepted trajectories and patterns and is consistently interpreted as a deficit requiring remediation. An extensive review of the literature on functional play in autistic children led to the identification of 10 articles comparing autistic and typically developing children's…

Studies have shown that there are differences between the presentations of males and females diagnosed with autism. There remains a developing understanding about how the presentation of autism differs between boys (hereafter referred to as 'assigned males at birth') and girls (assigned females at birth). This study sought to investigate the…

Little is currently known about the autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-related difficulties of females narrowly below the ASD diagnostic threshold and whether the disorder conceptualisation should be broadened to capture their presentations. We extracted fine-grained information from the assessment reports of 222 children who were either diagnosed…

Academic acceleration, which enhances challenges for academically gifted students, can be subject-based or whole-grade. Limited research has explored its application in the twice-exceptional population, where students possess notable cognitive strengths and challenges due to psychological diagnoses. Our clinical study investigates the likelihood…

Manifestations of insistence on sameness (IS) and circumscribed interests (CI) are complex, with individuals varying considerably, not only in the types of behaviours they express, but also in terms of a behaviour's frequency, intensity, trajectory, adaptive benefits, and impacts. However, current quantitative RRB instruments capture only certain…

Background: Integrated primary care (IPC) can address prevalent behavioral health concerns identified in pediatric office visits, but research on IPC consultation patterns is limited. Objective: This study investigated variation in consultation rates across presenting problems, patient sociodemographic factors, and IPC treatment duration. Method:…