Despite growing interest in placental epigenetics, the combined impact of prenatal stress and socioeconomic status on placental methylation is still largely understudied. We conducted a study to examine the associations of prenatal stress and socioeconomic factors (household income, Hollingshead socioeconomic index) with placental methylation.…

Examining sub-threshold autistic traits in non-autistic first-degree relatives of individuals on the autism spectrum, known as the Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP), could provide new insights into the associations and familial aggregation of autistic traits. This study was a retrospective cross-sectional study of parents (n = 1008), probands with…

The study aimed to identify the mediating role of emotional intelligence and social competences in the relationship between gender and broad autism phenotype (BAP) as well as between age and BAP. It comprised 85 parents of children with ASD. They completed the questionnaires of Autism-Spectrum Quotient, social competences, and emotional…

Empathy and executive functions (EFs) are multimodal constructs that enable individuals to cope with their environment. Both abilities develop throughout childhood and are known to contribute to social behavior and academic performance in young adolescents. Notably, mentalizing and EF activate shared frontotemporal brain areas, which in previous…

Although few studies have established significant associations between cancer risk perception and smoking status, the evidence remains inconclusive. Therefore, the current study aimed to examine the association between risk perception for developing cancer and smoking status, controlling for sociodemographic factors. Data from the National Cancer…

Arithmetic ability is critical for daily life, academic achievement, career development, and future economic success. Individual differences in arithmetic skills among children and adolescents are related to variations in brain structures. Most existing studies have used hypothesis-driven region of interest analysis. To identify distributed brain…

Intra-individual response time variability (IIRTV) during cognitive performance is increasingly recognized as an important indicator of attentional control (AC) and related brain region function. However, what determinants contribute to preschoolers' IIRTV received little attention. The present study explored the interaction of dopaminergic…

The negative health effects of cigarette smoking during pregnancy (SDP) on the foetus are well known. Despite previous reports of poor cognitive performance in offspring exposed to SDP, few studies specifically consider language outcomes according to maternal smoking. In this study, we systematically review the literature to assess the…

Many individuals with autism experience challenges using language in social contexts (i.e., pragmatic language). Characterizing and understanding pragmatic variability is important to inform intervention strategies and the etiology of communication challenges in autism; however, current manual coding-based methods are often time and labor…

Background: Previous research has largely focused on evaluating the impact of teaching practical parenting skills to parents with intellectual disabilities. Teaching them about the importance and nature of early attachment behaviors has not yet been explored. This study investigates whether knowledge of early attachment behavior of young adults…

Although differences in DNA methylation have been associated with both syndromic and idiopathic autism, differential methylation has not been examined previously with respect to sex differences. The goals of this study were to (1) identify differences in the DNA methylation profiles of lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from a subgroup of severely…

The association between physical fitness and age-related differences in cognition and brain structure has been studied fairly extensively during development and aging, yet comparatively less in young adulthood. The current study examined 1,195 young adults aged 22 to 36 (54% female; 67% Caucasian) to better understand associations between physical…

Atypical visual perceptual skills are thought to underlie unusual visual attention in autism spectrum disorders. We assessed whether individual differences in visual processing skills scaled with quantitative traits associated with the broader autism phenotype (BAP). Visual perception was assessed using the Figure-ground subtest of the Test of…

Individuals of the same species display remarkable variation in behavior, even in identical contexts. Increasing complexity in behavioral phenotypes brings with it an increase in individual variation in the manifestation of those phenotypes, and human behavior undoubtedly stands at the pinnacle of complexity. In this article, we discuss current…

The non-cognitive skills self-control and grit are often considered predictors of school performance, but whether this relationship is causal remains unclear. We investigated the causality of this association using a twin design. Specifically, we evaluated the direct impact of self-control and grit on school performance, while controlling for…