Autism and other pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) are a phenomenologically related set of neuropsychiatric disorders. These conditions are characterized by patterns of both delay and deviance in multiple areas of development; typically their onset is in the first months of life (APA, 1994; Volkmar & Klin, 2005). Although often associated with some degree of mental retardation, the patte...

BACKGROUND & AIMS We tested the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) hypothesis that so-called specific developmental disorders are marked by a pattern of specific discrepant achievement, and an alternative hypothesis that children with these disorders show a pattern of relatively pervasive low achievement. METHODS & PROCEDURES Children with a diagnosis of Mixed Recepti...

To determine the role of life events in the occurrence of depression in children with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), we compared 11 patients (DSM-III-R; 9 male; 2 female; M age: 11.0 years; M full-scale IQ: 75.3) with PDD and depression, with an age- and sex-matched control group of patients with PDD without depression (DSM-III-R; 9 male; 2 female; M age: 9.8 years; M full-scale IQ: 6...

Epigenetics is an intrinsic mechanism that alters gene function - not by altering DNA sequences, but by chemically modifying the DNA and chromosomal histone proteins. Epigenetics is involved in genomic imprinting and X-chromosome inactivation in humans, and the failure of this mechanism causes a subset of congenital syndromes and cancers. Until recently, it has been believed that epigenetic mod...

OBJECTIVE Although the prevalence of children with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) has increased, empirical data about the role and practices of occupational therapists have not been reported in the literature. This descriptive study investigated the practice of occupational therapists with children with PDD. METHOD A survey was mailed to 500 occupational therapists in the Sensory Int...

Due to co-morbidities and treatment resistant nature of pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), diverse combinations of regimens have been tried. This retrospective study aimed to explore adjunctive use of aripiprazole in children with PDD. Changes in illness severity were measured by Clinical Global Impression of Severity (CGI-S) and Clinical Global Impression of Improvement (CGI-I) in 14 arip...

The author reviews the issue on whether Rett syndrome (RS) is a subtype of pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs). More than 200 articles of RS have been published in the last 10 years. Internal and external validities of RS have been established by several independent studies. There remains the question whether RS presents clinical features that meet the total criteria for PDDs. The availabl...

The performance of two screening instruments for pervasive developmental disorders was studied in the total population of children and adolescents with mental retardation between 4 and 18 years (N=1059) in Friesland, a northern province of the Netherlands. Parents completed the ABC, staff completed the PDD-MRS. The screening instruments were related to the ADI-R and ADOS for 184 participants. T...

The aims of this article are to provide an up-to-date review of the methodological features and substantive results of published epidemiological surveys of the prevalence of pervasive developmental disorders (PDD). This article updates previous reviews (1, 2) with the inclusion of new studies made available since then. The specific questions addressed inthis article are: a) how are cases of PDD...

Speech and prosody-voice profiles for 15 male speakers with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) and 15 male speakers with Asperger syndrome (AS) were compared to one another and to profiles for 53 typically developing male speakers in the same 10- to 50-years age range. Compared to the typically developing speakers, significantly more participants in both the HFA and AS groups had residual articulati...