1. Fecteau SM, Boivin L, Trudel M, Corbett BA, Harrell FE, Jr., Viau R, Champagne N, Picard F. {{Parenting stress and salivary cortisol in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: Longitudinal variations in the context of a service dog’s presence in the family}}. {Biol Psychol}. 2016.
A significant portion of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder report high levels of stress related to parenting responsibilities, which have been linked to abnormal cortisol patterns. This study seeks to better understand the parents’ adaptation to caregiving demands and use of a service dog, by taking into account longitudinal variations in salivary cortisol and perception of parental stress. Salivary cortisol was collected one day per week for 15 weeks by 98 primary caregivers of children with ASD. Overall, parents perceived high levels of stress at baseline. Mean morning cortisol increase was below expected levels for healthy adults, and perception of stress predicted morning cortisol activity. Hypocorticolism related to chronic stress may be present in parents of children with ASD. Longitudinal analysis revealed that the presence of a service dog in the family had an effect on parenting stress, wakening and morning cortisol levels.
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2. Jones RM, Southerland A, Hamo A, Carberry C, Bridges C, Nay S, Stubbs E, Komarow E, Washington C, Rehg JM, Lord C, Rozga A. {{Increased Eye Contact During Conversation Compared to Play in Children With Autism}}. {J Autism Dev Disord}. 2016.
Children with autism have atypical gaze behavior but it is unknown whether gaze differs during distinct types of reciprocal interactions. Typically developing children (N = 20) and children with autism (N = 20) (4-13 years) made similar amounts of eye contact with an examiner during a conversation. Surprisingly, there was minimal eye contact during interactive play in both groups. Gaze behavior was stable across 8 weeks in children with autism (N = 15). Lastly, gaze behavior during conversation but not play was associated with autism social affect severity scores (ADOS CSS SA) and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2). Together findings suggests that eye contact in typical and atypical development is influenced by subtle changes in context, which has implications for optimizing assessments of social communication skills.
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3. Thorup E, Kleberg JL, Falck-Ytter T. {{Gaze Following in Children with Autism: Do High Interest Objects Boost Performance?}}. {J Autism Dev Disord}. 2016.
This study tested whether including objects perceived as highly interesting by children with autism during a gaze following task would result in increased first fixation durations on the target objects. It has previously been found that autistic children differentiate less between an object another person attends to and unattended objects in terms of this measure. Less differentiation between attended and unattended objects in ASD as compared to control children was found in a baseline condition, but not in the high interest condition. However, typically developing children differentiated less between attended and unattended objects in the high interest condition than in the baseline condition, possibly reflecting reduced influence of gaze cues on object processing when objects themselves are highly interesting.
