Feeding challenges are a significant concern for autistic children. Literature has yet to comprehensively characterize feeding challenges for autistic children. Further research is needed to understand predictors of feeding severity and identify opportunities for screening and intervention. The purpose of this study was to characterize the…

Primary reflexes are highly stereotypical, automatic movements comprising much of the motor repertoire of newborns. The current study examined rates of presence of five primary reflexes (snout, visual rooting, sucking, tactile rooting, and grasp) and variables predictive of their persistence for children with ASD (n = 35), developmental disability…

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effects of tact and match-to-sample instructions on the increase and maintenance of intraverbal responses to subcategorical questions (i.e., naming multiple items in a subcategory of a category). Three Chinese children on the autism spectrum (2 boys, 1 girl, aged 6-8 years old) participated in this…

Little is known about care providers' expectations for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and intellectual disabilities (ID) in Ghana. This study used group concept mapping (n = 9) and a quantitative survey (n = 128) to explore and compare service providers' and parents' expectations for children with ASD or ID. Data were analyzed using…

The current study evaluated a brief, informant-based autism interview: the Developmental, Dimensional and Diagnostic Interview -- Adult Version (3Di-Adult). Feasibility, reliability and validity of the Dutch 3Di-Adult was tested amongst autistic participants (n = 62) and a non-autistic comparison group (n = 30) in the Netherlands. The 3Di-Adult…

Previous studies reported mixed findings on autistic individuals' pitch perception relative to neurotypical (NT) individuals. We investigated whether this may be partly due to individual differences in cognitive abilities by comparing their performance on various pitch perception tasks on a large sample (n = 164) of autistic and NT children and…

This review aimed to identify measurement tools to assess dietary intake and physical activity (PA) among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and describe the evidence of validity and availability of each tool. Searches were conducted in PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and PsycINFO using keywords for ASD, PA, diet, and assessment/measurement…

We conducted a systematic review of the literature to evaluate the quality of the dietary data and the methods used to obtain them in studies with children and adolescents with ASD. The search of PsycINFO, PubMed, SciELO, and Web of Science using SPIDER strategy retrieved 1975 studies. Data on dietary intake assessment methodologies were…

We used an adapted alternating treatments design to compare the effects of traditional and embedded discrete trial teaching (DTT) with adults with autism. Traditional DTT consisted of the instructor presenting a discriminative stimulus to start each trial ("Point to___"), implementing a prompt (i.e., manual guidance), and providing…

Autistic students are a growing subgroup within post-secondary schooling; however, little is known about barriers to their success in that context. Research suggests autistic students face more challenges to completing post-secondary education than neurotypical students, but findings often rely on expert opinion and fail to incorporate first-hand…

We examined the use of filled pauses in conversations between homogeneous pairs of autistic and non-autistic adults. A corpus of semi-spontaneous speech was used to analyse the rate, lexical type (nasal "uhm" or non-nasal "uh"), and prosodic realisation (rising, level or falling) of filled pauses. We used Bayesian modelling for…

Purpose: Social media sites provide autistic youth a familiar space to interact that is devoid of many of the challenges that accompany face-to-face interactions. As such, it is important to determine whether the linguistic profiles observed during online interactions are consistent with face-to-face interactions. This preliminary study took a…

Purpose: This qualitative study examines autistic adolescents' perception of the quality of their relationship with their parent using the Three Minute Speech Sample. Methods: Twenty autistic youth (13-17 years; 83% male) spoke, uninterrupted, for three minutes about their thoughts and feelings regarding their mothers. Audio-recorded speech…

Autism is associated with genomic instability, which is regulated by telomere length (TL) and index of global methylation (LINE-1). This study will determine relative TL (RTL) and LINE-1 methylation percentage for 69 patients and 33 control subjects to evaluate their potential role as biomarkers for autism. The results displayed a significant…

Emerging research points to high rates of major psychiatric disorders and chronic medical conditions among autistic adults. However, the unique healthcare needs of autistic adults are often overlooked, perhaps due to limitations in population-level surveillance and widespread public misconceptions about autism in adulthood. Understanding the…