The literature on the importance of early identification and early intervention for children with developmental disabilities such as autism continues to grow. The increased prevalence of autistic spectrum disorders has fostered research efforts on the development and validation of autism-specific screening instruments for use with young children. There are currently several such autism-specific...

background and aims: this research evaluated the effects of humanoid robots on improvement of eye contact in autistic children. methods and materials: this research used a multiple baseline, single-subject design with control to test 5 autistic children (2 girls and 3 boys) in tehran during 2010. the children aged 7 to 9 years and were tested by gilliam autism rating scales (gars) to ensure the...

the autism spectrum disorders (asd) are amongst the most heritable complex disorders. although there have been many efforts to locate the genes associated with asd risk, many has been remained to be disclosed about the genetics of asd. scrutiny's have only disclosed a small number of de novo and inherited variants significantly associated with susceptibility to asd. these only comprise a s...

the autism spectrum disorders (asds) are common neurodevelopmental disorders estimated to affect 1 in 88 children. asd is a complex condition, result of genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. however, genetic comopnent seems to play an important role. the loss/gain of 1kb and more nucleotides, copy number variation (cnv), is the significant genetic factor in the etiology of asd. the cnv...

In addition to core symptoms, i.e., social interaction and communication difficulties and restricted and repetitive behaviors, autism is also characterized by aspects of superior perception. One well-replicated finding is that of superior performance in visual search tasks, in which participants have to indicate the presence of an odd-one-out element among a number of foils. Whether these aspec...

While recent studies suggest a converging role for genetic factors towards risk for nosologically distinct disorders including autism, intellectual disability (ID), and epilepsy, current estimates of autism prevalence fail to take into account the impact of comorbidity of these disorders on autism diagnosis. We aimed to assess the effect of comorbidity on the diagnosis and prevalence of autism ...

Helen M. Johnson, John Gaitanis MD, and Eric M. Morrow, MD, PhD  introdUCtion: AUtisM genetiCs reseArCh hAs direCt relevAnCe to the CliniC Autism is a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorder that affects people of all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds and is about four times more prevalent in males. The incidence of autism has risen so dramatically over the past few decades that this incre...

OBJECTIVE To determine the relationship of motor skills and the core behaviors of young children with autism, social affective skills and repetitive behaviors, as indicated through the calibrated autism severity scores. DESIGN The univariate GLM tested the relationship of gross and fine motor skills measured by the gross motor scale and the fine motor scale of the MSEL with autism symptomolog...

BACKGROUND Pediatricians, neurologists, and geneticists are important sources for autism surveillance, screening, and referrals, but practical time constraints limit the clinical utility of behavioral observations. We analyzed behaviors under favorable conditions (ie, video of autism evaluations reviewed by experts) to determine what is optimally observable within 10-minute samples, asked for r...

It is unknown whether sex influences the diagnostic evaluation of autism spectrum disorder, or whether male and female adults within the spectrum have different symptom profiles. This study reports sex differences in clinical outcomes for 1244 adults (935 males and 309 females) referred for autism spectrum disorder assessment. Significantly, more males (72%) than females (66%) were diagnosed wi...