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...

Results Compared with those born in 1992, each successively younger cohort has significantly higher odds of an autism diagnosis than the previous cohort, controlling for age and period effects. For example, individuals born in 2003 have 16.6 times the odds of an autism diagnosis compared with those born in 1992 [95% confidence interval (CI) 7.8–35.3]. The cohort effect observed in these data is...

Prototype formation is a critical skill for category learning. Research suggests that individuals with autism may have a deficit in prototype formation of some objects; however, results are mixed. This study used a natural category, faces, to further examine prototype formation in high-functioning individuals with autism. High-functioning children (age 8-13 years) and adults with autism (age 17...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to describe the typical longitudinal developmental trajectories of social and communication functioning in children with autism and to determine the correlates of these trajectories. METHODS Children with autism who were born in California from 1992 through 2001 and enrolled with the California Department of Developmental Services were identified. Subjects...

Autism spectrum disorder is associated with diverse social, educational, and occupational challenges. To date, no standardized, internationally accepted tools exist to assess autism spectrum disorder-related functioning. World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health can serve as foundation for developing such tools. This study aimed to identify a...

Cognitive autism research is mainly focusing on children and young adults even though we know that autism is a life-long disorder and that healthy aging already has a strong impact on cognitive functioning. We compared the neuropsychological profile of 23 individuals with autism and 23 healthy controls (age range 51-83 years). Deficits were observed in attention, working memory, and fluency. Ag...

Although emotional functioning is impaired in children with autism, it is unclear if this impairment is due to difficulties with facial expression, autonomic responsiveness, or the verbal description of emotional states. To shed light on this issue, we examined responses to pleasant and unpleasant odors in eight children (8-14 years) with high-functioning autism and 8 age-matched typically deve...

objective: the present study has been carried out to develop social cognition interventional program (scip) based on theory of mind (tom), and to investigate its effects on high-functional autistic (hfa) children's social function. methods: present study was completely experimental and its participants were randomly assigned to an experimental or a control group (among 14 hfa, 7 in experim...