The writing skills of autistic university students have received very little empirical attention. Previous research has suggested that autistic people may struggle with writing, in part, due to challenges with Theory of Mind. However, other research indicates that Theory of Mind difficulties are far from universal in autism, varying across…

The writing skills of autistic university students have received very little empirical attention. Previous research has suggested that autistic people may struggle with writing, in part, due to challenges with Theory of Mind. However, other research indicates that Theory of Mind difficulties are far from universal in autism, varying across…

A meta-analysis was performed to examine differences in IQ profiles between individuals with Asperger's disorder (AspD) and high-functioning autism (HFA). Fifty-two studies were included for this study. The results showed that (a) individuals with AspD had significantly higher full-scale IQ, verbal IQ (VIQ), and performance IQ (PIQ) than did…

Sleep problems associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been well documented, but less is known about the effects of sleep problems on day-time cognitive and adaptive performance in this population. Children diagnosed with autism or pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) (N = 335) from 1 to 10 years of age…

Performance patterns on verbal subtests from the WISC-IV were compared between a clinically-referred sample of children with either autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Children with ASD demonstrated a statistically significant stepwise pattern where performance on Similarities was best, followed by…

Recent findings indicate that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) could, surprisingly, infer traits from behavioural descriptions. Now we need to know whether or not individuals with ASD are able to use trait information to identify people by their faces. In this study participants with and without ASD were presented with pairs of…

Background: Development of children with congenital visual impairment (VI) has been associated with vulnerable socio-communicative outcomes often bearing striking similarities to those of sighted children with autism. To date, very little is known about language and social communication in children with VI of normal intelligence. Methods: We…

Although people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have severe problems with pragmatic aspects of language, little is known about their pragmatic reasoning. We carried out a behavioral study on high-functioning adults with autistic disorder (n = 11) and Asperger syndrome (n = 17) and matched controls (n = 28) to investigate whether they…

The relation between level of intellectual functioning and risk for associated symptoms in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was investigated. Cognitive ability and associated symptoms were assessed directly and/or via parent report in 74 children with ASD at 6 and 9 years of age. Participants were classified as lower and higher…