We examined semantic processing in ASD children by presenting sentences with congruent or incongruent final words and visual narratives with congruent or incongruent final panels. An N400 effect to incongruent words appeared as compared to congruent ones, which was attenuated for the ASD children. We observed a negativity sustained to incongruous…

Visual attention of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was assessed using a change blindness paradigm. Twenty-five adolescents with ASD aged 12-18 years and 25 matched typically developing (TD) adolescents viewed 36 pairs of digitized real-world images. Each pair of images was displayed in a "flicker paradigm" whereby a…

A common example of social differences in autism spectrum disorder is poor modulation of reciprocal gaze, including reduced duration of eye contact and difficulty detecting the aim of another's gaze. It remains unclear, however, whether such differences are specific to the social domain, or are instead indicative of broader alterations in…

A number of training interventions have been designed to improve executive functions and inhibitory control (IC) across the lifespan. Surprisingly, no study has investigated the structural neuroplasticity induced by IC training from childhood to late adolescence, a developmental period characterized by IC efficiency improvement and protracted…

This study was aimed to investigate the effects of social versus non-social stimuli on postural responses in 21 boys with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (mean age of 11.6 ± 1.5) compared with 30 typically developing (TD) boys (mean age of 11.7 ± 1.8). Postural control of children was examined while they were standing on a force plate and viewing…

Previous research suggested that adolescents with autism spectrum disorder are better than typically developing children in detecting local, non-social details within complex visual scenes. To better understand these differences, we used the image database by Sareen et al., containing the size and on-screen location information of all changes in…

While most typically developing (TD) participants have a coarse-to-fine processing style, people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) seem to be less globally and more locally biased when processing visual information. The stimulus-specific spatial frequency content might be directly relevant to determine this temporal hierarchy of visual…

The recently proposed Social Motivation theory (Chevallier et al., Trends in cognitive sciences 16(4):231-239, 2012) suggests that social difficulties in Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) might be caused by a difference in the motivation to engage with other people. Here we compared adolescents with (N = 31) and without (N = 37) ASC on the…

Background: Assessment of intelligence and executive function (EF) is common in complex neuropsychiatric practice. Although previous studies have shown that EF and intelligence are related, it is unknown whether these constructs relate to one another in a similar manner across different ability groups (mild intellectual disability, borderline…

Purpose: This study documented the efficacy of visual-acoustic biofeedback intervention for residual rhotic errors, relative to a comparison condition involving traditional articulatory treatment. All participants received both treatments in a single-subject experimental design featuring alternating treatments with blocked randomization of…

Fluency is used as an indicator of reading proficiency. Many students with reading disabilities are unable to benefit from typical interventions. This study is designed to replicate Lorusso, Facoetti, Paganoni, Pezzani, and Molteni's (2006) work using FlashWord, a computer program that tachistoscopically presents words in the right or left visual…

Background: The few studies that have evaluated syntax in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have yielded conflicting findings: some suggest that once matched on mental age, ASD and typically developing controls do not differ for grammar, while others report that morphosyntactic deficits are independent of cognitive skills in ASD. There is a need for…

Studies are needed that examine neurobiological characteristics in high-risk individuals prior to substance use disorder (SUD) development. In this pilot study, 4 adolescent subjects at high risk for SUD (having at least 1 parent with an SUD) were compared with 4 adolescent reference subjects on a cortico-limbic reactivity paradigm, where they…

Evidence suggests that people with autism rely less on holistic visual information than typical adults. The current studies examine this by investigating core visual processes that contribute to holistic processing--namely, individuation and element grouping--and how they develop in participants with autism and typically developing (TD)…

This study examines the attitudes and the behavioural intentions of typically developing (TD) adolescents towards a hypothetical peer with Asperger syndrome (AS). Participants (N = 179, M age = 13.7 years) viewed two PowerPoint presentations one of a TD male target and one of a male target with AS. The target with AS was introduced either with…