Assessment of individuals on the autism spectrum often includes a measure of nonverbal IQ. One such measure is the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM). For large research studies with participants distributed nationally it is desirable for assessments to be available online. Because time is a premium, it is ideal that the measure produces…

This study assessed whether olfactory familiarization can render food odors more pleasant, and consequently food more attractive, to children with autism spectrum disorder. Participants were first presented with a series of food odors (session 1). Then, they were familiarized on four occasions (time window: 5 weeks) with one of the two most…

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) is widely used to estimate autistic intelligence (Joseph in The neuropsychology of autism. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011; Goldstein et al. in "Assessment of autism spectrum disorders." Guilford Press, New York, 2008; Mottron in "J Autism Dev Disord" 34(1):19-27, 2004).…

Understanding that people's ideas may be false is a challenging step in Theory of Mind (ToM) development, which is accomplished around the age of 4-5 years old by typically developing (TD) children. False-belief attribution remains difficult beyond this age for certain clinical populations, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), where delays in…

The eye-tracking experiment was carried out to assess fixation duration and scan paths that individuals with and without high-functioning autism spectrum disorders employed when identifying simple and complex emotions. Participants viewed human photos of facial expressions and decided on the identification of emotion, the negative-positive emotion…

Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may present sensory processing alterations that are specific to each environment in which they develop, inevitably impacting their daily functioning. Method: The aim of this study is to compare the different types of sensory modulation vulnerabilities (over-responsiveness,…

It is well established that adults converge on common referring expressions in dialogue, and that such lexical alignment is important for successful and rewarding communication. The authors show that children with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and chronological- and verbal-age-matched typically developing (TD) children also show spontaneous…

Children with developmental disorders often have poor motor performance. This study aimed to address the association between tactile localization ability, an indicator of body image, and motor function in children with motor deficits. Eighteen children with motor deficits participated, and their upper and lower limbs were assessed. To assess the…

Paying attention is a critical first step toward learning. For children in primary school classrooms there can be many things to attend to other than the focus of a lesson, such as visual displays on classroom walls. The aim of this study was to use eye-tracking techniques to explore the impact of visual displays on attention and learning for…

The success of witness interviews in the criminal justice system depends on the accuracy of information obtained, which is a function of both amount and quality of information. Attempts to enhance witness retrieval such as mental reinstatement of context have been designed with typically developed adults in mind. In this article, the relative…

Drawing tasks are frequently used to test competing theories of visuospatial skills in autism. Yet, methodological differences between studies have led to inconsistent findings. To distinguish between accounts based on local bias or global deficit, we present a simple task that has previously revealed dissociable local/global impairments in…

This study investigates the question as to whether and how the linguistic and other cognitive abilities of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) differ from those of children with High-Functioning Autism (HFA). To this end, 27 Dutch-speaking elementary-school-age children with SLI, 27 age-matched children with HFA, and a control group…

This study investigates syntax in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), its parallelism with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and its relation to other aspects of cognition. We focus on (1) 3rd person accusative clitic (ACC3) production, a clinical marker of SLI hypothesized to relate to WM, and (2) 1st person accusative clitic (ACC1) production,…

Previous research has illustrated the unique benefits of three-dimensional (3-D) Virtual Reality (VR) technology in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children. This study examined the use of 3-D VR technology as an assessment tool in ASD children, and further compared its use to two-dimensional (2-D) tasks. Additionally, we aimed to examine…

The study investigated sequence learning from stochastic feedback in boys with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and typically developed (TD) boys. We asked boys with ASD from Nigeria and the UK as well as age- and gender-matched controls (also males only) to deduce a sequence of four left and right button presses, LLRR, RRLL, LRLR, RLRL, LRRL and…