This study examined whether the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS: Social skills for teenagers with developmental and autism spectrum disorders: The PEERS treatment manual, Routledge, New York, 2010a) affected neural function, via EEG asymmetry, in a randomized controlled trial of adolescents with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a group of typically develo...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of an applied behaviour analysis (ABA)-based intervention conducted by a robot compared to an ABA-based intervention conducted by a human trainer in promoting self-initiated questions in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). METHODS Data were collected in a combined crossover multiple baseline design acros...

The theory of mind is certainly necessary. The dire consequences of a missing theory of mind in autism spectrum disorders are a clear proof for it. So, it might be interesting to examine how it is necessary and useful by looking at some specific (and possible) functions in the mind of a child as well as of an adult, beyond the more general comprehension of one’s own and others’ mental state. Fi...

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are common in the general childhood population, and are both serious and lifelong. Tremendous strides have beenmade in the treatment of these ASD in recent years, particularly with respect to psychological interventions. Given the considerable amount of time and cost involved in providing these interventions, parent training and involvement is a particularly appe...

While there is ample evidence that children treat words as mutually exclusive, the cognitive basis of this bias is widely debated. We focus on the distinction between pragmatic and lexical constraints accounts. High-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) offer a unique perspective on this debate, as they acquire substantial vocabularies despite impoverished social-pragmatic s...

We explored internal control of behavior using direct observation and parent report. Previous research has found that both the delay of gratification task and parent-reported effortful control predict later social ability and more positive outcomes in typically developing children. Children with autism spectrum disorder have previously been reported to have reduced effortful control, whereas de...

This study reports on a new false belief measure in a sample of 124 children and adolescents with or without high functioning autism (HFASD). In the classic paradigm, a participant predicts in which of two discrete locations a deceived protagonist will look for an object. In the current Sandbox task, the object is buried and reburied in a sandbox, thus creating a continuum between locations. Co...

Introduction Autism is approaching the numbers of an epidemic. Past efforts have focused on identifying the genetic basis of Autism Spectrum disorders with minimal success. Recently, a lot of work is being carried out in Epigenetics, Nutrigenetics in order to analyse the cause of Autism Spectrum Disorders. The present paper reviews the various studies being conducted in this domain and provides...