We developed a brief, informant-report interview for assessing autism spectrum conditions (ASC) in adults, called the Developmental, Dimensional and Diagnostic Interview-Adult Version (3Di-Adult); and completed a preliminary evaluation. Informant reports were collected for participants with ASC (n = 39), a non-clinical comparison group (n = 29)…

Given the emphasis on early screening for ASD, it is crucial to examine the concordance between parent report and clinician observation of autism-related behaviors. Similar items were compared from the First Year Inventory (Baranek et al. "First-Year Inventory (FYI) 2.0." University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2003), a parent…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show reduced gaze to social partners. Eye contact during live interactions is often measured using stationary cameras that capture various views of the child, but determining a child's precise gaze target within another's face is nearly impossible. This study compared eye gaze coding derived from…

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by a series of deficits in social interaction and communication and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped behavior patterns. In addition, a high percentage of ADS is associated with anxiety disorders. The goal of this study is to assess the perception of anxiety in a group of children and…

Growing awareness of autism spectrum disorders has increased the demand for diagnostic services in adulthood. High rates of mental health problems have been reported in young people and adults with autism spectrum disorder. However, sampling and methodological issues mean prevalence estimates and conclusions about specificity in psychiatric…

The present study aims at examining whether the "Social Skills Performance Assessment" (SSPA; Patterson et al. in "Schizophr Res" 48(2-3):351-360, 2001) is a suitable performance-based measure to assess social skills in adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). For this purpose, social skills of individuals with ASD and…

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are principally characterized by impairments in social functioning. Experimental investigation often is conducted using methods measuring social attention, social cognition, and social communication. In this study, we instead measured interest in social information, making a distinction between basic-level…

There is a paucity of instruments designed to measure social competence of adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. The Social Responsiveness Scale is one of a few that can be used. This study compared differences between mother and father reports of social competence of adolescents. Data were collected from parents of 50 adolescents with and…

Background: Although many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) experience difficulties with anxiety, the manifestation of these difficulties remains unresolved. The current study assessed anxiety in a large population-based twin sample, aged 10-15 years. Phenotypic analyses were used to explore anxiety symptoms in children with ASDs,…

Objective: Comparative studies of social responsiveness, an ability that is impaired in autism spectrum disorders, can inform our understanding of both autism and the cognitive architecture of social behavior. Because there is no existing quantitative measure of social responsiveness in chimpanzees, we generated a quantitative, cross-species…

The purpose of this study was to reduce stereotypy and challenging behavior during play skills instruction by adding an abolishing operation component (AOC) to the intervention strategy. An alternating treatments design compared one condition in which participants were allowed to engage in stereotypy freely before beginning the play skills…

Autism susceptibility genes likely have effects on continuously distributed autism-related traits, yet few measures of such traits exist. The Broader Phenotype Autism Symptom Scale (BPASS), developed for use with affected children and family members, measures social motivation, social expressiveness, conversational skills, and flexibility. Based…

The "Social-Communication Assessment Tool" (S-CAT) was created as a direct observation instrument to quantify specific social and communication deficits of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) within educational settings. In this pilot study, the instrument's content validity and interrater reliability were investigated to determine the…