Individuals with ASD seem to construct categories via processes different to typically developing individuals. We examined whether individuals with ASD engage in structural alignment of exemplars when constructing categories. We taught children with ASD and typically developing children novel nouns for either single or multiple exemplars, and then…

Repetitive and restricted behaviours are a core feature of autism, and cognition in autistic individuals may also be repetitive and restricted. We aimed to investigate the relationship between repetitive behaviours and repetitive thinking. We predicted that autistic people would experience more repetitive, perseverative, visual and negative…

Understanding another's actions, including what they are doing and why they are doing it, can be difficult for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This understanding is supported by the action observation (AON) and mentalizing (MZN) networks, as well as the superior temporal sulcus. We examined these areas in children with ASD and…

Sensory processing difficulties affect the development of sensorimotor skills in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the effect of sensory information on postural control is unclear in the ASD adult population. The present study examined the effect of visual information on postural control as well as the attentional demands…

We have developed a False-Belief (FB) understanding task for use on a computer tablet, trying to assess FB understanding in a less social way. It is based on classical FB protocols, and additionally includes a manipulation of language in an attempt to explore the facilitating effect of linguistic support during FB processing. Specifically, the FB…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit disordered speech prosody, but sources of disordered prosody remain poorly understood. We explored patterns of temporal alignment and prosodic grouping in a speech-based metronome repetition task as well as manual coordination in a drum tapping task among Cantonese speakers with ASD and…

Object personification is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human agents. In online forums, autistic individuals commonly report experiencing this phenomenon. Given that approximately half of all autistic individuals experience difficulties identifying their own emotions, the suggestion that object personification may be a feature of…

Visual search has been used extensively to investigate differences in mid-level visual processing between individuals with ASD and TD individuals. The current study employed two visual search paradigms with Gaborized stimuli to assess the impact of task distractors (Experiment 1) and task instruction (Experiment 2) on local-global visual…

Typically developing adults with low and high Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scores made rapid social evaluations of neutral faces when these were primed by briefly presented emotional faces. High AQ participants rated neutral faces as more threatening than low AQ participants, regardless of the prime condition. Both groups rated target neutral…

We studied episodic memory and future thinking for self-relevant and other-relevant events at different levels of retrieval support, theory of mind, and delay discounting in ASD children and adolescents (ASDs). Compared to typically developing controls, ASDs produced fewer internal (episodic) but a similar number of external (semantic) details…

Little is known about age-related cognitive differences in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, given the overlap in cognitive impairments in ASD to those seen in typical aging, it is possible that adults with ASD will face even greater cognitive difficulties as they age. The current study used a cross-sectional design to examine age-related…

Auditory stream segregation allows us to organize our sound environment, by focusing on specific information and ignoring what is unimportant. One previous study reported difficulty in stream segregation ability in children with Asperger syndrome. In order to investigate this question further, we used an interleaved melody recognition task with…

Autism is associated with differences in sensory processing and motor coordination. Evidence from electroencephalography suggests individual perturbation evoked response (PER) components represent specific aspects of postural disturbance processing; P1 reflects the detection and N1 reflects the evaluation of postural instability. Despite the…

Following recent evidence for a link between interoception, emotion and empathy, we investigated relationships between these factors in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). 26 adults with ASD and 26 healthy participants completed tasks measuring interoception, alexithymia and empathy. ASD participants with alexithymia demonstrated lower cognitive and…

This study examines the discourse basis for referent accessibility and its relation to the choice of referring expressions by children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and typically developing children. The aim is to delineate how the linguistic and extra-linguistic context affects referent accessibility to the speaker. The study also examines…