1. Gliga T, Senju A, Pettinato M, Charman T, Johnson MH. {{Spontaneous Belief Attribution in Younger Siblings of Children on the Autism Spectrum}}. {Dev Psychol}. 2013.
The recent development in the measurements of spontaneous mental state understanding, employing eye-movements instead of verbal responses, has opened new opportunities for understanding the developmental origin of « mind-reading » impairments frequently described in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Our main aim was to characterize the relationship between mental state understanding and the broader autism phenotype, early in childhood. An eye-tracker was used to capture anticipatory looking as a measure of false beliefs attribution in 3-year-old children with a family history of autism (at-risk participants, n = 47) and controls (control participants, n = 39). Unlike controls, the at-risk group, independent of their clinical outcome (ASD, broader autism phenotype or typically developing), performed at chance. Performance was not related to children’s verbal or general IQ, nor was it explained by children « missing out » on crucial information, as shown by an analysis of visual scanning during the task. We conclude that difficulties with using mental state understanding for action prediction may be an endophenotype of autism spectrum disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
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2. Kotte A, Joshi G, Fried R, Uchida M, Spencer A, Woodworth KY, Kenworthy T, Faraone SV, Biederman J. {{Autistic Traits in Children With and Without ADHD}}. {Pediatrics}. 2013.
OBJECTIVE:To assess the implications of autistic traits (ATs) in youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) without a diagnosis of autism.METHODS:Participants were youth with (n = 242) and without (n = 227) ADHD and controls without ADHD in whom a diagnosis of autism was exclusionary. Assessment included measures of psychiatric, psychosocial, educational, and cognitive functioning. ATs were operationalized by using the withdrawn + social + thought problems T scores from the Child Behavior Checklist.RESULTS:A positive AT profile was significantly overrepresented among ADHD children versus controls (18% vs 0.87%; P < .001). ADHD children with the AT profile were significantly more impaired than control subjects in psychopathology, interpersonal, school, family, and cognitive domains.CONCLUSIONS:A substantial minority of ADHD children manifests ATs, and those exhibiting ATs have greater severity of illness and dysfunction.
