The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent social distancing policies forced healthcare teams to drastically alter the way they deliver services. This was particularly challenging for clinicians involved in diagnosing autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as assessment tools and methods required face-to-face social interactions between clinicians and…

The SPARK cohort was established to facilitate recruitment in studies of large numbers of participants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Online registration requires participants to have received a lifetime professional diagnosis by health or school providers although diagnoses are not independently verified. This study was set to examine the…

Purpose: This study examined the discriminative ability of acoustic indices of vocal hyperfunction combining smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS) and relative fundamental frequency (RFF). Method: Demographic, CPPS, and RFF parameters were entered into logistic regression models trained on two 1:1 case-control groups: individuals with and…

Timely recognition of autism in children is integral to improve developmental outcomes. This study used mixed-methods (84 case-registers and 20 in-depth interviews with caregivers of children with a diagnosis of autism) to explore the extent to which the nature of parental concerns and prior knowledge of developmental disorders impact the time…

People miss a high proportion of targets that only appear rarely. This low prevalence (LP) effect has implications for applied search tasks such as the clinical reading of mammograms. Computer aided detection (CAD) has been used to help radiologists search mammograms by highlighting areas likely to contain a cancer. Previous research has found a…

Objective: Currently, no clinically feasible objective measures exist that are specific to the signs of adductor laryngeal dystonia (LD), deterring effective diagnosis and treatment. This project sought to establish concurrent validity of a new automated acoustic outcome measure, designed to be specific to adductor laryngeal dystonia (AdLD): the…

Our institution developed and continuously improved a Neurodevelopmental Reflex (NDR) algorithm to help physicians with genetic test ordering for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). To assess its performance, we performed a retrospective study of 511 patients tested through NDR from 2018 to 2019. SNP Microarray identified pathogenic/likely…

As autism is an invisible and often stigmatised condition, disclosing the diagnosis may lead to both support and/or discrimination. This mixed-methods questionnaire study examined autistic adults' experiences of disclosure in various contexts. The sample consisted of 393 participants aged 17-83 years from two longitudinal surveys. Almost all…

Purpose: Tinnitus is a highly prevalent condition that can severely reduce health functioning. In spite of extant clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), implementation of these CPGs is relatively uncommon. As a result, patients seeking professional services for tinnitus often have no assurance of receiving evidence-based care. The purpose of this…

Background: Reducing hospital admissions for people with a learning disability is a key objective of national guidelines. However, there are currently little available data which indicate factors which might reduce the risk of hospital admission. Using a cohort of people at risk of hospital admission, this research sought to explore the…

Western blot (WB) or immunoblot is a workhorse method. It is commonly used by biologists for study of different aspects of protein biomolecules. In addition, it has been widely used in disease diagnosis. Despite some limitations such as long time, different applications of WB have not been limited. In the present review, we have summarized…

Questionnaires are widely used in autism assessment. However, their psychometric properties are generally not evaluated in clinical practice, and the comparability and applicability of such research is limited because questionnaires are often not simultaneously evaluated. This certainly pertains to predictive values which are highly population and…

Since the mid-90s, the number of children treated for bipolar disorder has increased considerably. As a result, the diagnosis was considered more closely, and the DSM-5 proposed a new diagnosis: Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD). This is a relatively new diagnosis in the psychological community, causing a lack of agreement on treatment…

It was recently reported that learning one is autistic earlier in life is associated with greater quality of life and well-being in university students. In a pre-registered extension of this work, we addressed several limitations of this study by: (1) recruiting a larger sample of more diverse ages and education levels; (2) distinguishing between…

This research explores the experiences of Beth, a university student in the UK, as she comes to be labelled as 'dyslexic', and as she has her diagnosis taken away. Through use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and discourse analysis, the research seeks to understand how Beth made sense of these experiences, and to explore the…