1. Bekhet AK, Johnson NL, Zauszniewski JA. {{Effects on Resilience of Caregivers of Persons With Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Role of Positive Cognitions}}. {Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association}. 2012 Nov 8.
Background: Approximately 2.8 million people in the United States are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Family caregivers manage many aspects of their care, which is demanding, overwhelming, and can affect their mental health. Objective: This study examined the effects of caregiver burden (risk factor) and positive cognitions (protective factors) on resourcefulness (resilience indicator) in 95 caregivers of persons with ASD. Design: Descriptive, correlational, and cross-sectional. Results: Positive cognitions explained 32% of the variance in resourcefulness, F(1, 93) = 44.49, p < .001, and as positive cognitions increased, caregivers' resourcefulness increased. A substantial drop in the beta weight of caregiver burden from B = -.36 to -.04 when positive cognitions was entered the equation suggested that positive cognitions mediated the effect of caregiver burden on resourcefulness. Conclusion: The results support resilience theory and suggest a need for developing interventions to strengthen positive thinking among caregivers of persons with ASD. Lien vers le texte intégral (Open Access ou abonnement)
2. Chevallier C, Huguet P, Happe F, George N, Conty L. {{Salient Social Cues are Prioritized in Autism Spectrum Disorders Despite Overall Decrease in Social Attention}}. {J Autism Dev Disord}. 2012 Nov 9.
Diminished social attention is often considered to be a central deficit in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). We further investigate this hypothesis by measuring the distracting power of social and non-social stimuli in the context of a Stroop task among children with ASD and typically developing controls (TDCs). Our results show that Stroop interference increases with social versus non-social distracters in TDCs, whereas the opposite pattern occurs in ASD. Within social stimuli, however, the superiority of direct gaze previously reported in the literature did not differ between the groups. Our data thus suggest that ASD children assign less weight to social than non-social stimuli, but that within social signals, salient stimuli remain prioritized.
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3. Clifford T, Minnes P. {{Logging On: Evaluating an Online Support Group for Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders}}. {J Autism Dev Disord}. 2012 Nov 10.
Twenty mothers participated in an online support group for parents of children with autism spectrum disorders. Twenty-five unrelated parents participated in a no-treatment control group. The participants completed online questionnaires prior to and following the 4-month support group, to evaluate changes in mood, anxiety, parenting stress, and positive perceptions. No significant differences between the groups or across time were found. However, parents who participated in the group reported being satisfied with the support they received and finding the group helpful. Issues related to participant recruitment and retention are discussed. Further research is required to investigate the efficacy of online support groups for parents of children with ASD.
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4. Fan J, Bernardi S, Dam NT, Anagnostou E, Gu X, Martin L, Park Y, Liu X, Kolevzon A, Soorya L, Grodberg D, Hollander E, Hof PR. {{Functional deficits of the attentional networks in autism}}. {Brain and behavior}. 2012 Sep;2(5):647-60.
Attentional dysfunction is among the most consistent observations of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, the neural nature of this deficit in ASD is still unclear. In this study, we aimed to identify the neurobehavioral correlates of attentional dysfunction in ASD. We used the Attention Network Test-Revised and functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine alerting, orienting, and executive control functions, as well as the neural substrates underlying these attentional functions in unmedicated, high-functioning adults with ASD (n = 12) and matched healthy controls (HC, n = 12). Compared with HC, individuals with ASD showed increased error rates in alerting and executive control, accompanied by lower activity in the mid-frontal gyrus and the caudate nucleus for alerting, and by the absence of significant functional activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for executive control. In addition, greater behavioral deficiency in executive control in ASD was correlated with less functional activation of the ACC. These findings of behavioral and neural abnormalities in alerting and executive control of attention in ASD may suggest core attentional deficits, which require further investigation.
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5. Gardner MR. {{Preparing nurses to care for people with developmental disabilities: perspectives on integrating developmental disabilities concepts and experiences into nursing education}}. {The Nursing clinics of North America}. 2012 Dec;47(4):517-27.
The argument that nursing curricula have not adequately prepared graduates to provide appropriate care for individuals with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities (DDs) has been put forward for a decade or more. This is of concern because the number of individuals with DDs has been increasing at a rapid rate. Undergraduate and graduate nursing curricula should address concepts of care for DDs across the lifespan and develop strategies to provide students with clinically relevant experiences to support development of competencies for care of this population. Exemplar strategies from the literature are described along with recommendations for further work.
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6. Hubbard AL, McNealy K, Scott-Van Zeeland AA, Callan DE, Bookheimer SY, Dapretto M. {{Altered integration of speech and gesture in children with autism spectrum disorders}}. {Brain and behavior}. 2012 Sep;2(5):606-19.
The presence of gesture during speech has been shown to impact perception, comprehension, learning, and memory in normal adults and typically developing children. In neurotypical individuals, the impact of viewing co-speech gestures representing an object and/or action (i.e., iconic gesture) or speech rhythm (i.e., beat gesture) has also been observed at the neural level. Yet, despite growing evidence of delayed gesture development in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), few studies have examined how the brain processes multimodal communicative cues occurring during everyday communication in individuals with ASD. Here, we used a previously validated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm to examine the neural processing of co-speech beat gesture in children with ASD and matched controls. Consistent with prior observations in adults, typically developing children showed increased responses in right superior temporal gyrus and sulcus while listening to speech accompanied by beat gesture. Children with ASD, however, exhibited no significant modulatory effects in secondary auditory cortices for the presence of co-speech beat gesture. Rather, relative to their typically developing counterparts, children with ASD showed significantly greater activity in visual cortex while listening to speech accompanied by beat gesture. Importantly, the severity of their socio-communicative impairments correlated with activity in this region, such that the more impaired children demonstrated the greatest activity in visual areas while viewing co-speech beat gesture. These findings suggest that although the typically developing brain recognizes beat gesture as communicative and successfully integrates it with co-occurring speech, information from multiple sensory modalities is not effectively integrated during social communication in the autistic brain.
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7. Kane MJ, Angoa-Perez M, Briggs DI, Sykes CE, Francescutti DM, Rosenberg DR, Kuhn DM. {{Mice genetically depleted of brain serotonin display social impairments, communication deficits and repetitive behaviors: possible relevance to autism}}. {PLoS One}. 2012;7(11):e48975.
Autism is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired reciprocal social interaction, communication deficits and repetitive behaviors. A very large number of genes have been linked to autism, many of which encode proteins involved in the development and function of synaptic circuitry. However, the manner in which these mutated genes might participate, either individually or together, to cause autism is not understood. One factor known to exert extremely broad influence on brain development and network formation, and which has been linked to autism, is the neurotransmitter serotonin. Unfortunately, very little is known about how alterations in serotonin neuronal function might contribute to autism. To test the hypothesis that serotonin dysfunction can contribute to the core symptoms of autism, we analyzed mice lacking brain serotonin (via a null mutation in the gene for tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (TPH2)) for behaviors that are relevant to this disorder. Mice lacking brain serotonin (TPH2-/-) showed substantial deficits in numerous validated tests of social interaction and communication. These mice also display highly repetitive and compulsive behaviors. Newborn TPH2-/- mutant mice show delays in the expression of key developmental milestones and their diminished preference for maternal scents over the scent of an unrelated female is a forerunner of more severe socialization deficits that emerge in weanlings and persist into adulthood. Taken together, these results indicate that a hypo-serotonin condition can lead to behavioral traits that are highly characteristic of autism. Our findings should stimulate new studies that focus on determining how brain hyposerotonemia during critical neurodevelopmental periods can alter the maturation of synaptic circuits known to be mis-wired in autism and how prevention of such deficits might prevent this disorder.
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8. Ronconi L, Gori S, Ruffino M, Franceschini S, Urbani B, Molteni M, Facoetti A. {{Decreased coherent motion discrimination in autism spectrum disorder: the role of attentional zoom-out deficit}}. {PLoS One}. 2012;7(11):e49019.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been associated with decreased coherent dot motion (CDM) performance, a task that measures magnocellular sensitivity as well as fronto-parietal attentional integration processing. In order to clarify the role of spatial attention in CDM tasks, we measured the perception of coherently moving dots displayed in the central or peripheral visual field in ASD and typically developing children. A dorsal-stream deficit in children with ASD should predict a generally poorer performance in both conditions. In our study, however, we show that in children with ASD, CDM perception was selectively impaired in the central condition. In addition, in the ASD group, CDM efficiency was correlated to the ability to zoom out the attentional focus. Importantly, autism symptoms severity was related to both the CDM and attentional zooming-out impairment. These findings suggest that a dysfunction in the attentional network might help to explain decreased CDM discrimination as well as the « core » social cognition deficits of ASD.
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9. Salmanian M, Tehrani-Doost M, Ghanbari-Motlagh M, Shahrivar Z. {{Visual memory of meaningless shapes in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders}}. {Iranian journal of psychiatry}. 2012 Summer;7(3):104-8.
OBJECTIVE: Visual memory is an important cognitive ability, which has been studied in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). In such studies meaningful shapes were used more frequently. Since meaningless shapes provide a better assessment of short term visual memory, in this study we used them to evaluate visual memory in children and adolescents with ASDs compared to the normal group. METHODS: Four visual memory tests of Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) including Paired Associates Learning (PAL), Pattern Recognition Memory (PRM), Spatial Recognition Memory (SRM) and Delayed Matching to Sample (DMS) were administered to 15 children and adolescents with ASDs (high functioning autism and Asperger syndrome) and to 15 normal participants aged 8 to 17,with IQ of above 70. RESULTS: Individuals with ASDs performed worse than the normal group on visual memory tasks. After eliminating IQ as a covariate, no significant difference was observed between the two groups in terms of visual memory performance. CONCLUSION: It seems that deficits on visual memory tasks in youths with ASDs could be related to their general intellectual abilities.
