The last issue of the prestigious Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry included a study that examined the role of parental age on the risk for autism among two very large nationally representative cohorts in two separate countries (Sweden and the UK). The basic question – whether the parents’ age impact the risk of having a child with autism – is not that exciting or innovative as several studies have shown that older parents, especially dads, are more likely to have children with autism. What was really interesting about this study is that it was conducted with an incredibly large numbers of twins, which can help us understand the association between parental age and the relative environmental vs. genetic contributions to autism. Read More

Last year I reviewed a number of studies examining brain differences between children with autism and typically developing peers (see for example White matter differences in children with autism, Autism and the corpus callosum). Previous studies have usually compared children with autism to typically developing children. To some extent this group-differences approach assumes homogeneity of syndrome presentation, which may not reflect the continuum and diversity of autism spectrum disorders. Read More

Children with high functioning autism and Aspergers disorder outperform typically developing peers on ‘embedded figure’ tests. These tests usually require the test taker to locate a previously seen figure within a more complex figure. For example, a child may be shown a triangle and then shown a picture of a house and requested to find the triangle hidden within the picture of the house. Thus, the child has to ‘break’ the complex figure (the house) into parts or smaller components in order to identify the triangle. Some have suggested that this above average performance by individuals with ASD is due to a deficit in the processing of complex whole figures. That is, typically developing children tend to see the house as ‘a whole’, slowing the identification of small figures within the picture. On the other hand, kids with ASDs may see the house as ‘parts’, facilitating the identification of embedded figures. Read More

Last week I discussed a study showing that kids with low functioning autism identify noses better when these are presented upside down than when presented upright. In the context of that study, the authors suggested that these kids have an aversion to examining eyes directly and tend to focus on parts of the face away from the eyes. Read More

Children with autism show deficits in grammatical judgments but this may be due to working memory deficits.

A brief review of: INGE-MARIE EIGSTI, LOISA BENNETTO (2009). Grammaticality judgments in autism: Deviance or delay Journal of Child Language DOI: 10.1017/s0305000909009362 Read More