1. Franken TE, Lewis C, Malone SA. {{Brief Report: Are Children with Autism Proficient Word Learners?}} {J Autism Dev Disord};2009 (Aug 18)
2. New JJ, Schultz RT, Wolf J, Niehaus JL, Klin A, German TC, Scholl BJ. {{The scope of social attention deficits in autism: Prioritized orienting to people and animals in static natural scenes}}. {Neuropsychologia};2009 (Aug 14)
A central feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an impairment in ‘social attention’ – the prioritized processing of socially-relevant information, e.g. the eyes and face. Socially relevant stimuli are also preferentially attended in a broader categorical sense, however: observers orient preferentially to people and animals (compared to inanimate objects) in complex natural scenes. To measure the scope of social attention deficits in autism, observers viewed alternating versions of a natural scene on each trial, and had to ‘spot the difference’ between them – where the difference involved either an animate or inanimate object. Change detection performance was measured as an index of attentional prioritization. Individuals with ASD showed the same prioritized social attention for animate categories as did control participants. This could not be explained by lower-level visual factors, since the effects disappeared when using blurred or inverted images. These results suggest that social attention – and its impairment in autism – may not be a unitary phenomenon: impairments in visual processing of specific social cues may occur despite intact categorical prioritization of social agents.
3. Szatmari P, Bryson S, Duku E, Vaccarella L, Zwaigenbaum L, Bennett T, Boyle MH. {{Similar developmental trajectories in autism and Asperger syndrome: from early childhood to adolescence}}. {J Child Psychol Psychiatry};2009 (Jul 22)
Objective: The objective of this study was to chart the developmental trajectories of high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) from early childhood to adolescence using the presence and absence of structural language impairment (StrLI) as a way of differentiating autism from Asperger syndrome (AS). Method: Sixty-four high-functioning children with ASD were ascertained at 4-6 years of age from several different regional diagnostic and treatment centers. At 6-8 years of age, the ADI-R and the Test of Oral Language Development were used to define an autism group (those with StrLI at 6-8 years of age) and an AS group (those without StrLI). Growth curve analysis was then used to chart the developmental trajectories of these children on measures of autistic symptoms, and adaptive skills in communication, daily living and socialization. Results: Differentiating the ASD group in terms of the presence/absence of StrLI provided a better explanation of the variation in growth curves than not differentiating high-functioning ASD children. The two groups had similar developmental trajectories but the group without StrLI (the AS group) was functioning better and had fewer autistic symptoms than the group with StrLI (the autism group) on all measures across time. The differences in outcome could not be explained by non-verbal IQ or change in early language skills. Conclusion: Distinguishing between autism and Asperger syndrome based on the presence or absence of StrLI appears to be a clinically useful way of classifying ASD sub-types.
4. Yorbik O, Kurt I, Hasimi A, Ozturk O. {{Chromium, Cadmium, and Lead Levels in Urine of Children with Autism and Typically Developing Controls}}. {Biol Trace Elem Res};2009 (Aug 18)
