Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0004352 (autism)
 32,579 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

This prospective study examined object exploration behavior in 66 12-month-old infants, of whom nine were subsequently diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Previous investigations differ on when the repetitive behaviors characteristic of autism are first present in early development. A task was developed that afforded specific opportunities for a range of repetitive uses of objects and was coded blind to outcome status. The autism/ASD outcome group displayed significantly more spinning, rotating, and unusual visual exploration of objects than two comparison groups. The average unusual visual exploration score of the autism/ASD group was over four standard deviations above the mean of the group with no concerns at outcome. Repetitive behaviors at 12 months were significantly related to cognitive and symptomatic status at 36 month outcome. These results suggest that repetitive or stereotyped behaviors may be present earlier than initially thought in very young children developing the autism phenotype.
Autism 2008 Sep
PMID:Atypical object exploration at 12 months of age is associated with autism in a prospective sample. 1880 42

There is an urgent requirement for the improvement of early detection of ASDs. This article provides a brief review of research on the accuracy of screeners for children with ASD that have been administered to general pediatric samples and then present results of a population-based study with a broadband screener to detect children with communication delays including children with ASD.
Autism 2008 Sep
PMID:Validation of the Infant-Toddler Checklist as a broadband screener for autism spectrum disorders from 9 to 24 months of age. 1880 44

The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) was used to screen younger (16-23 months) versus older (24-30 months) high- and low-risk toddlers. Refusal rates for follow-up interview showed no group differences, but parents of younger/low-risk children were more likely to refuse evaluation than parents of high-risk children. PPP for an ASD diagnosis was: younger/high-risk 0.79, older/high-risk 0.74, younger/low-risk 0.28, and older/low-risk 0.61, with PPP differing by age within the low-risk group. Most of the children in all groups, however, were diagnosed with a developmental disorder. Symptom severity generally did not differ among groups. Cognitive and adaptive measures showed minimal group differences. Therefore, older and younger toddlers had similar symptomatology and developmental delays; PPP for ASD is better at 24 than 18 months for low-risk children; however, these children are still highly likely to show a developmental disorder. Clinical decision making should balance early identification against the lower specificity of M-CHAT screening for the younger/low-risk group.
Autism 2008 Sep
PMID:Screening for autism in older and younger toddlers with the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers. 1880 45

A link between developmental language disorders and atypical cerebral lateralization has been postulated since the 1920s, but evidence has been indirect and inconsistent. The current study investigated this proposal using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (fTCD), which assesses blood flow through the middle cerebral arteries serving the left and right cerebral hemispheres. A group of young adults with specific language impairment (SLI; n = 11) were recruited along with three comparison groups: (i) adults with a history of childhood SLI, but who did not meet criteria for language impairment in adulthood (SLI-history; n = 9); (ii) adults with an autism spectrum disorder and a comorbid language impairment (ASD; n = 11) and (iii) adults with no history of developmental disorder (typical; n = 11). There was no difference between the chronological age of the four groups, and the SLI and typical groups were individually matched on gender and handedness. During fTCD measurement, participants were asked to silently generate words starting with a given letter and then later required to verbalize these. All of the participants in the SLI-history group and the majority of participants in the ASD (81.8%) and typical (90.9%) groups had greater activation in the left compared to the right middle cerebral arteries, indicating left hemisphere dominance. In contrast, the majority of participants in the SLI groups had language function lateralized to the right hemisphere (54.5%) or dispersed bilaterally (27.3%). These findings suggest that atypical cerebral dominance is not implicated in all cases of poor language development (i.e. ASD and SLI-history groups), but may act as a biological marker of persisting SLI.
 ...
PMID:Cerebral dominance for language function in adults with specific language impairment or autism. 1895 53

Autism is a complex disorder, characterized by social, cognitive, communicative, and motor symptoms. One suggestion, proposed in the current study, to explain the spectrum of symptoms is an underlying impairment in multisensory integration (MSI) systems such as a mirror neuron-like system. The mirror neuron system, thought to play a critical role in skills such as imitation, empathy, and language can be thought of as a multisensory system, converting sensory stimuli into motor representations. Consistent with this, we report preliminary evidence for deficits in a task thought to tap into MSI--"the bouba-kiki task" in children with ASD. The bouba-kiki effect is produced when subjects are asked to pair nonsense shapes with nonsense "words". We found that neurotypical children chose the nonsense "word" whose phonemic structure corresponded with the visual shape of the stimuli 88% of the time. This is presumably because of mirror neuron-like multisensory systems that integrate the visual shape with the corresponding motor gestures used to pronounce the nonsense word. Surprisingly, individuals with ASD only chose the corresponding name 56% of the time. The poor performance by the ASD group on this task suggests a deficit in MSI, perhaps related to impaired MSI brain systems. Though this is a behavioral study, it provides a testable hypothesis for the communication impairments in children with ASD that implicates a specific neural system and fits well with the current findings suggesting an impairment in the mirror systems in individuals with ASD.
 ...
PMID:Preliminary evidence for deficits in multisensory integration in autism spectrum disorders: the mirror neuron hypothesis. 1897 85

We are developing an online community for teachers of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder that will provide tools to share, analyze, and evaluate assisted communication. The data will be collected from software on smartphones that allows children to communicate with teachers using images. Since this is the first approach towards systematic data collection for children with ASD, we expect a significant impact on current teaching methods.
 ...
PMID:An online community for teachers of children with autism to support, observe, and evaluate communication enabled with smartphones. 1899 43

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 high-functioning adults on the autism spectrum, in order to examine the nature of their personal experiences of music. Consistent with the literature on typically developing people's engagement with music, the analysis showed that most participants exploit music for a wide range of purposes in the cognitive, emotional and social domains, including mood management, personal development and social inclusion. However, in contrast to typically developing people, the ASD group's descriptions of mood states reflected a greater reliance on internally focused (arousal) rather than externally focused (emotive) language.
Autism 2009 Jan
PMID:'Hath charms to soothe . . .': an exploratory study of how high-functioning adults with ASD experience music. 1917 75

Evidence continues to maintain that the use of antecedent variables (i.e., instructional practices, and environmental characteristics) increase prosocial and adaptive behaviors of students with disabilities (e.g., Kern et al. in J Appl Behav Anal 27(1):7-19, 1994; Stichter et al. in Behav Disord 30:401-418, 2005). This study extends the literature by systematically utilizing practitioner-implemented structural analyzes within school settings to determine antecedent variables affecting the prosocial behavior of students with autism. Optimal antecedents were combined into intervention packages and assessed utilizing a multiple baseline design across settings. All three students demonstrated improvement across all three settings. Rates of engagement and social interaction were obtained from classroom peers to serve as benchmark data. Findings indicate that practitioners can implement structural analyzes and design corresponding interventions for students with ASD within educational settings.
J Autism Dev Disord 2009 Jun
PMID:The use of structural analysis to develop antecedent-based interventions for students with autism. 1919 Oct 17

The present study examines co-occurring psychiatric syndromes in a well-characterized sample of youths with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; n = 177) and their siblings (n = 148), reported independently by parents and teachers. In ASD, parents reported substantial comorbidity with affective (26%), anxiety (25%), attentional (25%), conduct (16%), oppositional (15%), and somatic problems (6%). Teachers reported a much lower prevalence. Autistic severity scores for children with ASD exhibited moderate correlations with general psychopathology within- but not across-informants, whereas, sibling correlations were significant both within- and across-informants. Results support the role of environmental context in psychiatric symptom expression in children affected by autism and suggest that informant discrepancies may more provide critical cues for these children via specific environmental modifications.
J Autism Dev Disord 2009 Jun
PMID:Multi-informant ratings of psychiatric symptom severity in children with autism spectrum disorders: the importance of environmental context. 1919 Oct 16

Evidence of atypical perception in individuals with ASD is mainly based on self report, parental questionnaires or psychophysical/cognitive paradigms. There have been relatively few attempts to establish whether binocular vision is enhanced, intact or abnormal in those with ASD. To address this, we screened visual function in 51 individuals with autistic spectrum disorder and 44 typically developing individuals by measuring visual acuity, stereoacuity, convergence, divergence, ocular motility, incidence of strabismus and integrity of the optokinetic response. The data suggest that many aspects of vision, including visual acuity, are unaffected in ASD, but that convergence is an aspect of visual function that merits further research in those with ASD.
J Autism Dev Disord 2009 Jul
PMID:Vision in children and adolescents with autistic spectrum disorder: evidence for reduced convergence. 1922 51


<< Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next >>