The objective of this study was to refine the understanding of cognitive troubles in autism and to clarify the modes of information processing mobilized by the subjects. Eight children were examined, aged 4;9-9;1, with a diagnosis of moderate autism. The Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) was presented to each child. The results support an executive functioning deficit interpretati...

The area of decision making has much to offer in our effort to understand special populations. This pilot study is an example of just such a project, where we illustrate how traditional decision making tools and tasks can be used to uncover strengths and weaknesses within a growing population of young adults with autism. In this pilot project we extended accounts of autistic behavior such as th...

BACKGROUND Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in social behavior, communication difficulties and the occurrence of repetitive or stereotyped behaviors. There has been substantial evidence for dysregulation of the immune system in autism. METHODS We evaluated differences in the number and phenotype of circulating blood cells in young children with autism (n = ...

Recently the Lancet published a Commission on future of care and clinical research autism, which included side panel arguing for adoption “profound autism”, term in- tended to describe autistic people who require constant supervision or care, thought usually have significant intellectual disability, limited no language, an inability advocate themselves. This state-of-the-art review deconstructs...

This study evaluated the effects of therapeutic horseback riding on social functioning in children with autism. We hypothesized that participants in the experimental condition (n = 19), compared to those on the wait-list control (n = 15), would demonstrate significant improvement in social functioning following a 12-weeks horseback riding intervention. Autistic children exposed to therapeutic h...

This study examined emotional awareness in children with autism. Twenty-two high functioning children with autism (mean age 10 years and 2 months) and 22 typically developing children, matched for age and gender, were presented with the four basic emotions (happiness, anger, sadness and fear) in single and multiple emotion tasks. Findings suggest that children with autism have difficulties iden...

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a multifaceted association between genes and the environment. Currently, in the majority of patients, the etiology of autism is not known and coupled with increasing prevalence rates, along with the high degree of heritability of autism, the development of animal models is crucial for studying and developing therapies for autism. A key characteristic...

Friendship is an important part of normal social functioning, yet there are precious few instruments for measuring individual differences in this domain. In this article, we report a new self-report questionnaire, the Friendship Questionnaire (FQ), for use with adults of normal intelligence. A high score on the FQ is achieved by the respondent reporting that they enjoy close, empathic, supporti...