1. Azer SA, Bokhari RA, AlSaleh GS, Alabdulaaly MM, Ateeq KI, Guerrero APS, Azer S. {{Experience of parents of children with autism on YouTube: are there educationally useful videos?}}. {Informatics for health & social care}. 2018: 1-15.
The aims of this study were to determine the following: first, are there educationally useful videos of parents of children with autism sharing their experiences? Second, do any of the data related to videos help in identifying useful videos? And third, what do posted comments tell us? YouTube was searched for videos of parents sharing their experiences. The following parameters were collected: title, creator, URL, duration, number of viewers, likes, dislikes, comments, days on YouTube, and country. Based on agreed-upon criteria, videos were divided independently into educationally useful and non-useful categories. A critical thematic analysis of comments was conducted. A total of 180 videos were finally identified, of which 106 (59%) provided useful information, scoring 15.3 +/- 0.7 (mean +/- SD); 74 (41%) were determined to be not educationally useful, scoring 8.6 +/- 2.1. The differences in scores were significant (p < 0.001), but there were no significant differences between the useful and non-useful groups in terms of video parameters. No correlation was found between scores and any of the videos' parameters. In conclusion, there are videos that can be used as educational resources. The videos' parameters did not differentiate between useful and non useful. Useful videos were mostly created by professional societies and by parents. The study reflects the emerging role of YouTube in sharing experiences. Lien vers le texte intégral (Open Access ou abonnement)
2. Baker EK, Richdale AL, Hazi A. {{Employment status is related to sleep problems in adults with autism spectrum disorder and no comorbid intellectual impairment}}. {Autism}. 2018: 1362361317745857.
Both sleep problems and unemployment are common in adults with autism spectrum disorder; however, little research has explored this relationship in this population. This study aimed to explore factors that may be associated with the presence of an International Classification of Sleep Disorders-Third Edition defined sleep disorder in adults with autism spectrum disorder (IQ > 80). A total of 36 adults with autism spectrum disorder and 36 controls were included in the study. Participants completed a 14-day actigraphy assessment and questionnaire battery. Overall, 20 adults with autism spectrum disorder met the International Classification of Sleep Disorders-Third Edition criteria for insomnia and/or a circadian rhythm sleep-wake disorder, while only 4 controls met criteria for these disorders. Adults with autism spectrum disorder and an International Classification of Sleep Disorders-Third Edition sleep disorder had higher scores on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and were more likely to be unemployed compared to adults with autism spectrum disorder and no sleep disorder. The findings demonstrate, for the first time, that sleep problems are associated with unemployment in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Further research exploring the direction of this effect is required; sleep problems that have developed during adolescence make attainment of employment for those with autism spectrum disorder difficult, or unemployment results in less restrictions required for optimal and appropriate sleep timing.
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3. Bhaumik R, Pradhan A, Das S, Bhaumik DK. {{Predicting Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Domain-Adaptive Cross-Site Evaluation}}. {Neuroinformatics}. 2018.
The advances in neuroimaging methods reveal that resting-state functional fMRI (rs-fMRI) connectivity measures can be potential diagnostic biomarkers for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent data sharing projects help us replicating the robustness of these biomarkers in different acquisition conditions or preprocessing steps across larger numbers of individuals or sites. It is necessary to validate the previous results by using data from multiple sites by diminishing the site variations. We investigated partial least square regression (PLS), a domain adaptive method to adjust the effects of multicenter acquisition. A sparse Multivariate Pattern Analysis (MVVPA) framework in a leave one site out cross validation (LOSOCV) setting has been proposed to discriminate ASD from healthy controls using data from six sites in the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE). Classification features were obtained using 42 bilateral Brodmann areas without presupposing any prior hypothesis. Our results showed that using PLS, SVM showed poorer accuracies with highest accuracy achieved (62%) than without PLS but not significantly. The regions occurred in two or more informative connections are Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex, Somatosensory Association Cortex, Primary Auditory Cortex, Inferior Temporal Gyrus and Temporopolar area. These interrupted regions are involved in executive function, speech, visual perception, sense and language which are associated with ASD. Our findings may support early clinical diagnosis or risk determination by identifying neurobiological markers to distinguish between ASD and healthy controls.
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4. Buja A, Volfovsky N, Krieger AM, Lord C, Lash AE, Wigler M, Iossifov I. {{Damaging de novo mutations diminish motor skills in children on the autism spectrum}}. {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}. 2018; 115(8): E1859-e66.
In individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), de novo mutations have previously been shown to be significantly correlated with lower IQ but not with the core characteristics of ASD: deficits in social communication and interaction and restricted interests and repetitive patterns of behavior. We extend these findings by demonstrating in the Simons Simplex Collection that damaging de novo mutations in ASD individuals are also significantly and convincingly correlated with measures of impaired motor skills. This correlation is not explained by a correlation between IQ and motor skills. We find that IQ and motor skills are distinctly associated with damaging mutations and, in particular, that motor skills are a more sensitive indicator of mutational severity than is IQ, as judged by mutational type and target gene. We use this finding to propose a combined classification of phenotypic severity: mild (little impairment of either), moderate (impairment mainly to motor skills), and severe (impairment of both IQ and motor skills).
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5. Burns CO, Matson JL. {{An investigation of the association between seizures, autism symptomology, and developmental functioning in young children}}. {Dev Neurorehabil}. 2018; 21(3): 188-96.
OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to explore whether a history of seizures was associated with autism symptom severity and developmental functioning in young children. METHODS: Autism symptom severity and developmental functioning were compared between children with and without a history or seizures who either had atypical development or met criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) based on review of records by a licensed clinical psychologist. RESULTS: Parents of children who met criteria for ASD reported lower levels of autism symptomology when the child had a history of seizures, while the opposite trend was found for children with atypical development. Participants without ASD or seizures had greater developmental functioning than the other groups. CONCLUSION: The present study emphasizes the need for early identification and diagnosis of both ASD and seizure disorders, as timely intervention for these two conditions may be related to improved outcomes for young children.
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6. Chan KKS, Lam CB, Law NCW, Cheung RYM. {{From child autistic symptoms to parental affective symptoms: A family process model}}. {Res Dev Disabil}. 2018; 75: 22-31.
BACKGROUND: Depression and anxiety are prevalent among parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but limited research has investigated why parenting a child with ASD is associated with elevated distress and increased risks of mental health problems. We responded to this gap in the literature by examining the associations between child autistic symptoms and parental affective symptoms, as well as the potential underlying mechanisms. Guided by a family process theory, we hypothesized that child autistic symptoms would be positively associated with parental depressive and anxiety symptoms, and that these associations would be mediated by parents’ concerns about their children’s characteristics (future-related worry), parental roles (parenting stress), marital relationships (marital conflicts), and family conditions (family economic pressure). METHODS: Cross-sectional questionnaire data were collected from 375 parents of children with ASD residing in Hong Kong, China. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. RESULTS: Child autistic symptoms were positively associated with parental depressive and anxiety symptoms. These associations were mediated by future-related worry, parenting stress, marital conflicts, and family economic pressure. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings revealed the potential pathways through which child autism symptomatology may adversely affect parental mental health. Our findings also highlighted the importance of designing multipronged intervention programs for families raising children with ASD in order to improve relevant family processes and reduce parental affective symptoms.
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7. Dickinson A, Gomez R, Jones M, Zemon V, Milne E. {{Lateral inhibition in the autism spectrum: An SSVEP study of visual cortical lateral interactions}}. {Neuropsychologia}. 2018; 111: 369-76.
Circuit level brain dysfunction has been suggested as a common mechanism through which diverse genetic risk factors and neurobiological sequelae lead to the core features of autism spectrum disorder (Geschwind 2009; Port et al. 2014). An important mediator of circuit level brain activity is lateral inhibition, and a number of authors have suggested that lateral inhibition may be atypical in ASD. However, evidence regarding putative atypical lateral connections in ASD is mixed. Here we employed a steady state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) paradigm to further investigate lateral connections within a group of high functioning adults with ASD. At a group level, we found no evidence of altered lateral interactions in ASD. Exploratory analyses reveal that greater ASD symptom severity (increased ADOS score) is associated with increased short range lateral inhibition. These results suggest that lateral interactions are not altered in ASD at a group-level, but that subtle alterations in such neurobiological processes may underlie the heterogeneity seen in the autism spectrum in terms of sensory perception and behavioral phenotype.
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8. Li EH, Zhao X, Zhang C, Liu W. {{Fragile X mental retardation protein participates in non-coding RNA pathways}}. {Yi chuan = Hereditas}. 2018; 40(2): 87-94.
Fragile X syndrome is one of the most common forms of inherited intellectual disability. It is caused by mutations of the Fragile X mental retardation 1(FMR1) gene, resulting in either the loss or abnormal expression of the Fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). Recent research showed that FMRP participates in non-coding RNA pathways and plays various important roles in physiology, thereby extending our knowledge of the pathogenesis of the Fragile X syndrome. Initial studies showed that the Drosophila FMRP participates in siRNA and miRNA pathways by interacting with Dicer, Ago1 and Ago2, involved in neural activity and the fate determination of the germline stem cells. Subsequent studies showed that the Drosophila FMRP participates in piRNA pathway by interacting with Aub, Ago1 and Piwi in the maintenance of normal chromatin structures and genomic stability. More recent studies showed that FMRP is associated with lncRNA pathway, suggesting a potential role for the involvement in the clinical manifestations. In this review, we summarize the novel findings and explore the relationship between FMRP and non-coding RNA pathways, particularly the piRNA pathway, thereby providing critical insights on the molecular pathogenesis of Fragile X syndrome, and potential translational applications in clinical management of the disease.
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9. Liu XS, Wu H, Krzisch M, Wu X, Graef J, Muffat J, Hnisz D, Li CH, Yuan B, Xu C, Li Y, Vershkov D, Cacace A, Young RA, Jaenisch R. {{Rescue of Fragile X Syndrome Neurons by DNA Methylation Editing of the FMR1 Gene}}. {Cell}. 2018; 172(5): 979-92.e6.
Fragile X syndrome (FXS), the most common genetic form of intellectual disability in males, is caused by silencing of the FMR1 gene associated with hypermethylation of the CGG expansion mutation in the 5′ UTR of FMR1 in FXS patients. Here, we applied recently developed DNA methylation editing tools to reverse this hypermethylation event. Targeted demethylation of the CGG expansion by dCas9-Tet1/single guide RNA (sgRNA) switched the heterochromatin status of the upstream FMR1 promoter to an active chromatin state, restoring a persistent expression of FMR1 in FXS iPSCs. Neurons derived from methylation-edited FXS iPSCs rescued the electrophysiological abnormalities and restored a wild-type phenotype upon the mutant neurons. FMR1 expression in edited neurons was maintained in vivo after engrafting into the mouse brain. Finally, demethylation of the CGG repeats in post-mitotic FXS neurons also reactivated FMR1. Our data establish that demethylation of the CGG expansion is sufficient for FMR1 reactivation, suggesting potential therapeutic strategies for FXS.
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10. Manohar H, Pravallika M, Kandasamy P, Chandrasekaran V, Rajkumar RP. {{Role of Exclusive Breastfeeding in Conferring Protection in Children At-Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder: Results from a Sibling Case-control Study}}. {Journal of neurosciences in rural practice}. 2018; 9(1): 132-6.
Background: Gut microflora influences neural development through complex mechanisms. Feeding practices, especially breastfeeding influence gut microbiome and thereby play a pivotal role in immune and neural development. Current understandings of the role of healthy distal gut microflora in the development of immune and neural systems provide insights into immunological mechanisms as one of the possible etiologies in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Studies have shown that optimal breastfeeding is associated with lower odds of being at-risk for ASD and children with ASD are suboptimally breastfed. Methods: The feeding practices of children with ASD (n = 30) was compared to their typically developing siblings as matched controls (n = 30). Information regarding feeding practices was collected from mothers through a semi-structured questionnaire. Results: About 43.3% of children with ASD received exclusive breastfeeding, whereas 76.7% of their typically developing siblings were exclusively breastfed. Exclusive breastfeeding was associated with lower odds for ASD (odds ratio [OR] = 0.166; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.025-0.65), while early introduction of top feeds was associated with higher odds (OR = 6; 95% CI = 1.33-55.19). Difficulties in breastfeeding were attributed to child-related factors in 13.2% of the children. Conclusion: Children with ASD are suboptimally breastfed compared to their typically developing siblings. Exclusive breastfeeding may confer protection in vulnerable children. Further studies on larger prospective sample are required to establish the association.
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11. Morris SM, Gutmann DH. {{A genotype-phenotype correlation for quantitative autistic trait burden in neurofibromatosis 1}}. {Neurology}. 2018; 90(8): 377-9.
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12. Rapp JT, Cook JL, Nuta R, Balagot C, Crouchman K, Jenkins C, Karim S, Watters-Wybrow C. {{Further Evaluation of a Practitioner Model for Increasing Eye Contact in Children With Autism}}. {Behav Modif}. 2018: 145445518758595.
Cook et al. recently described a progressive model for teaching children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to provide eye contact with an instructor following a name call. The model included the following phases: contingent praise only, contingent edibles plus praise, stimulus prompts plus contingent edibles and praise, contingent video and praise, schedule thinning, generalization assessments, and maintenance evaluations. In the present study, we evaluated the extent to which modifications to the model were needed to train 15 children with ASD to engage in eye contact. Results show that 11 of 15 participants acquired eye contact with the progressive model; however, eight participants required one or more procedural modifications to the model to acquire eye contact. In addition, the four participants who did not acquire eye contact received one or more modifications. Results also show that participants who acquired eye contact with or without modifications continued to display high levels of the behavior during follow-up probes. We discuss directions for future research with and limitations of this progressive model.
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13. Schwartz S, Shinn-Cunningham B, Tager-Flusberg H. {{Meta-analysis and systematic review of the literature characterizing auditory mismatch negativity in individuals with autism}}. {Neurosci Biobehav Rev}. 2018; 87: 106-17.
A number of past studies have used mismatch negativity (MMN) to identify auditory processing deficits in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Our meta-analysis compared MMN responses for individuals with ASD and typically developing controls (TD). We analyzed 67 experiments across 22 publications that employed passive, auditory-based MMN paradigms with ASD and TD participants. Most studies lacked design characteristics that would lead to an accurate description of the MMN. Variability between experiments measuring MMN amplitude was smaller when limited to studies that counterbalanced stimuli. Reduced MMN amplitude was found among young children with ASD compared to controls and in experiments that used nonspeech sounds. Still, few studies included adolescents or those with below-average verbal IQ. Most studies suffered from small sample sizes, and aggregating these data did not reveal significant group differences. This analysis points to a need for research focused specifically on understudied ASD samples using carefully designed MMN experiments. Study of individual differences in MMN may provide further insights into distinct subgroups within the heterogeneous ASD population.
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14. Shepherd D, Landon J, Taylor S, Goedeke S. {{Coping and care-related stress in parents of a child with autism spectrum disorder}}. {Anxiety, stress, and coping}. 2018: 1-14.
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Parenting a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is challenging and can result in elevated levels of parenting stress. This study investigated the relationship between parent-ratings of their child’s ASD symptoms and two conceptually different measures of parenting stress: One specific to the ASD context and the other a general stress measure applicable to the broader caregiving context. Additionally, the influence of coping style on the relationship between child’s ASD symptoms and parenting stress was investigated. DESIGN AND METHODS: Using an internet survey, parents (N = 178) caring for a child with ASD reported on coping strategies, completed two measures of parenting stress, and assessed their child’s ASD symptoms. RESULTS: Parenting stress increased with severity of the child’s ASD symptoms, but the strength of this relationship depended on whether a general or disorder-specific measure of parenting stress was used. Regression analyses indicated that some coping strategies moderated the impact of ASD symptom severity on the parent’s care-related stress, but moderation depended on how stress was conceptualized. CONCLUSION: This study reinforces the importance of identifying the coping strategies of parents of children with developmental disorders, and highlights the consequences of using different conceptual approaches to measure parenting stress.
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15. Tsai MN, Wu CL, Tseng LP, An CP, Chen HC. {{Extraversion Is a Mediator of Gelotophobia: A Study of Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Big Five}}. {Front Psychol}. 2018; 9: 150.
Previous research has shown that individuals with autism are frequently mocked in their childhood and are consequently more anxious about being ridiculed. Research has also shown that autistic individuals have a higher level of gelotophobia (fear of being laughed at) compared to typically developed individuals. However, recent studies have also found that gelotophobia is strongly related to personality, which suggests that personality is a factor that helps to create a higher level of gelotophobia in autistic individuals. To investigate whether this is the case, we recruited 279 Taiwanese high school students, 123 with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 156 typically developed students as a control group. Self-reporting questionnaires were used to gather data on the Big Five personality traits and on the gelotophobia-related traits of gelotophobia, gelotophilia, and katagelasticism. The results were analyzed and the two groups were compared for differences in gelotophobia and personality. The ASD group was found to have a higher level of gelotophobia than the typically developed group, but lower levels of gelotophilia and katagelasticism. Additionally, the ASD group was found to have lower levels of extraversion and agreeableness than the typically developed group, but no significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of conscientiousness, openness, and emotional stability. We then investigated the possible correlations between gelotophobia-related traits and the Big Five, and consequently the mediation effect of the Big Five on gelotophobia. The results show, firstly, that extraversion rather than ASD is a direct factor in gelotophobia. Secondly, the level of gelotophilia was partly influenced by autism but also to a certain extent by the level of extraversion. Lastly, the results indicate that autism and the level of agreeableness are in conflict when predicting the level of katagelasticism.
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16. Varga NA, Pentelenyi K, Balicza P, Gezsi A, Remenyi V, Harsfalvi V, Bencsik R, Illes A, Prekop C, Molnar MJ. {{Mitochondrial dysfunction and autism: comprehensive genetic analyses of children with autism and mtDNA deletion}}. {Behavioral and brain functions : BBF}. 2018; 14(1): 4.
BACKGROUND: The etiology of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is very heterogeneous. Mitochondrial dysfunction has been described in ASD; however, primary mitochondrial disease has been genetically proven in a small subset of patients. The main goal of the present study was to investigate correlations between mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) changes and alterations of genes associated with mtDNA maintenance or ASD. METHODS: Sixty patients with ASD and sixty healthy individuals were screened for common mtDNA mutations. Next generation sequencing was performed on patients with major mtDNA deletions (mtdel-ASD) using two gene panels to investigate nuclear genes that are associated with ASD or are responsible for mtDNA maintenance. Cohorts of healthy controls, ASD patients without mtDNA alterations, and patients with mitochondrial disorders (non-ASD) harbouring mtDNA deletions served as comparison groups. RESULTS: MtDNA deletions were confirmed in 16.6% (10/60) of patients with ASD (mtdel-ASD). In 90% of this mtdel-ASD children we found rare SNVs in ASD-associated genes (one of those was pathogenic). In the intergenomic panel of this cohort one likely pathogenic variant was present. In patients with mitochondrial disease in genes responsible for mtDNA maintenance pathogenic mutations and variants of uncertain significance (VUS) were detected more frequently than those found in patients from the mtdel-ASD or other comparison groups. In healthy controls and in patients without a mtDNA deletion, only VUS were detected in both panel. CONCLUSIONS: MtDNA alterations are more common in patients with ASD than in control individuals. MtDNA deletions are not isolated genetic alterations found in ASD; they coexist either with other ASD-associated genetic risk factors or with alterations in genes responsible for intergenomic communication. These findings indicate that mitochondrial dysfunction is not rare in ASD. The occurring mtDNA deletions in ASD may be mostly a consequence of the alterations of the causative culprit genes for autism or genes responsible for mtDNA maintenance, or because of the harmful effect of environmental factors.
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17. Wagner JB, Luyster RJ, Moustapha H, Tager-Flusberg H, Nelson CA. {{Differential Attention to Faces in Infant Siblings of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Associations with Later Social and Language Ability}}. {International journal of behavioral development}. 2018; 42(1): 83-92.
A growing body of literature has begun to explore social attention in infant siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with hopes of identifying early differences that are associated with later ASD or other aspects of development. The present study used eye-tracking to familiar (mother) and unfamiliar (stranger) faces in two groups of 6-month-old infants: infants with no family history of ASD (low-risk controls; LRC), and infants at high risk for ASD (HRA), by virtue of having an older sibling with ASD. HRA infants were further characterized based on autism classification at 24 months or older as HRA- (HRA without an ASD outcome) or HRA+ (HRA with an ASD outcome). For time scanning faces overall, HRA+ and LRC showed similar patterns of attention, and this was significantly greater than in HRA-. When examining duration of time spent on eyes and mouth, all infants spent more time on eyes than mouth, but HRA+ showed the greatest amount of time looking at these regions, followed by LRC, then HRA-. LRC showed a positive association between 6-month attention to eyes and 18-month social-communicative behavior, while HRA- showed a negative association between attention to eyes at 6 months and expressive language at 18 months (all correlations controlled for non-verbal IQ; HRA- correlations held with and without the inclusion of the small sample of HRA+). Differences found in face scanning at 6 months, as well as associations with social communication at 18 months, point to potential variation in the developmental significance of early social attention in children at low and high risk for ASD.
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18. Wang J, Wang Q, Wang S, Shen D. {{Sparse Multi-view Task-Centralized Learning for ASD Diagnosis}}. {Mach Learn Med Imaging}. 2017; 10541: 159-67.
It is challenging to derive early diagnosis from neuroimaging data for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this work, we propose a novel sparse multi-view task-centralized (Sparse-MVTC) classification method for computer-assisted diagnosis of ASD. In particular, since ASD is known to be age- and sex-related, we partition all subjects into different groups of age/sex, each of which can be treated as a classification task to learn. Meanwhile, we extract multi-view features from functional magnetic resonance imaging to describe the brain connectivity of each subject. This formulates a multi-view multi-task sparse learning problem and it is solved by a novel Sparse-MVTC method. Specifically, we treat each task as a central task and other tasks as the auxiliary ones. We then consider the task-task and view-view relations between the central task and each auxiliary task. We can use this task-centralized strategy for a highly efficient solution. The comprehensive experiments on the ABIDE database demonstrate that our proposed Sparse-MVTC method can significantly outperform the existing classification methods in ASD diagnosis.
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19. Wang Y, Wang L, Xu Q, Liu D, Chen L, Troje NF, He S, Jiang Y. {{Heritable aspects of biological motion perception and its covariation with autistic traits}}. {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America}. 2018; 115(8): 1937-42.
The ability to detect biological motion (BM) and decipher the meaning therein is essential to human survival and social interaction. However, at the individual level, we are not equally equipped with this ability. In particular, impaired BM perception and abnormal neural responses to BM have been observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by devastating social deficits. Here, we examined the underlying sources of individual differences in two abilities fundamental to BM perception (i.e., the abilities to process local kinematic and global configurational information of BM) and explored whether BM perception shares a common genetic origin with autistic traits. Using the classical twin method, we found reliable genetic influences on BM perception and revealed a clear dissociation between its two components-whereas genes account for about 50% of the individual variation in local BM processing, global BM processing is largely shaped by environment. Critically, participants’ sensitivity to local BM cues was negatively correlated with their autistic traits through the dimension of social communication, with the covariation largely mediated by shared genetic effects. These findings demonstrate that the ability to process BM, especially with regard to its inherent kinetics, is heritable. They also advance our understanding of the sources of the linkage between autistic symptoms and BM perception deficits, opening up the possibility of treating the ability to process local BM information as a distinct hallmark of social cognition.
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20. Yu TY, Chou W, Chow JC, Lin CH, Tung LC, Chen KL. {{IQ discrepancy differentiates levels of fine motor skills and their relationship in children with autism spectrum disorders}}. {Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat}. 2018; 14: 597-605.
Purpose: We investigated 1) the impact of differences in intelligence quotient discrepancy (IQD) on motor skills of preschool-aged children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD); 2) the relationships between IQD and motor skills in preschool-aged children with ASD. Methods: A total of 127 ASD preschool-aged children were divided into three groups according to the size of the IQD: IQD within 1 standard deviation (1SD; EVENIQ; n=81), discrepantly higher verbal intelligence quotient (VIQ; n=22; VIQ>performance intelligence quotient [PIQ] above 1SD [>/=15 points]), and discrepantly higher PIQ (n=24; PIQ>VIQ above 1SD [>/=15 points]). Children’s IQD and motor skills were determined with the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence – Fourth Edition and the motor subtests of the Comprehensive Developmental Inventory for Infants and Toddlers (CDIIT), respectively. Results: One-way analysis of variance revealed significant group differences for the fine motor domain of the CDIIT and the visual-motor coordination subtest (F=3.37-4.38, p<0.05). Children with discrepantly higher PIQ were associated with better fine motor skills than were children with even IQD and those with discrepantly higher VIQ, and vice versa. IQD (PIQ - VIQ) had significant positive correlations with the fine motor domain and fine motor subtests of the CDIIT (r=0.18-0.29, p<0.05). Conclusion: The IQD can identify different levels of fine motor skills in preschool-aged children with ASD. This study suggests important implications for clinicians, therapists, and researchers: discrepantly higher PIQ could be related to better visual-motor coordination, and discrepantly higher VIQ could be related to poor visual-motor coordination. Furthermore, the results support that when therapists are working with preschool-aged children with ASD who are developing fine motor skills or undertaking fine motor tasks related to visual-motor coordination, they may need to pay attention to the children's IQD. Lien vers le texte intégral (Open Access ou abonnement)
