1. Bekhet AK, Johnson NL, Zauszniewski JA. {{Resilience in family members of persons with autism spectrum disorder: a review of the literature}}. {Issues Ment Health Nurs};2012 (Oct);33(10):650-656.
Worldwide, caregivers find caring for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) challenging. Family members must manage many aspects of care giving, which is demanding, overwhelming, and can affect the family members’ mental health. However learning how to be resilient may help family members overcome the stress and burden associated with caring for a person with ASD. A search was completed in Medline, PsycINFO, Proquest, Web of Science, and CINAHL using the key words « autism, » « caregivers, » « mothers, » and « fathers, » alone and in combination. Inclusion criteria were English language articles reporting studies with samples of children with ASD, as distinct from children with other intellectual or developmental disabilities. Fifty-eight articles that met these inclusion criteria were summarized and, from those, the authors selected 22 articles that included indicators of resilience. This integrative review highlights current research on resilience in adult family members of persons with ASD. Indicators of resilience, risk factors, protective factors, and outcomes of resilience were identified. The review indicates that parents of children with ASD who possess indicators of resilience are better able to manage the adversity associated with caring for children with ASD. Thus, enhancing resilience among family members of persons with autism may be beneficial to both the caregivers and care recipients.
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2. Greimel E, Nehrkorn B, Fink GR, Kukolja J, Kohls G, Muller K, Piefke M, Kamp-Becker I, Remschmidt H, Herpertz-Dahlmann B, Konrad K, Schulte-Ruther M. {{Neural mechanisms of encoding social and non-social context information in autism spectrum disorder}}. {Neuropsychologia};2012 (Sep 24)
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often fail to attach context to their memories and are specifically impaired in processing social aspects of contextual information. The aim of the present study was to investigate the modulatory influence of social vs. non-social context on neural mechanisms during encoding in ASD. Using event-related fMRI, 13 boys with ASD and 13 typically developing boys comparable for age and IQ were investigated during encoding of neutral objects presented either with a social (faces) or a non-social (houses) context. A memory paradigm was then applied to identify brain activation patterns associated with encoding of subsequently recollected versus non-recollected objects. On the behavioural level, no significant between-group differences emerged. In particular, no differential effects of context on memory performance were observed. Neurally, however, context-specific group differences were observed in several brain regions. During encoding of subsequently recollected objects presented with a face, ASD subjects (compared to controls) showed reduced neural activation in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral middle frontal gyrus and right inferior parietal lobule. Neural activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus was positively correlated with memory performance in controls, but negatively in ASD individuals. During encoding of subsequently non-recollected objects presented in the non-social context, ASD subjects showed increased activation in the dorsal MPFC. Our findings suggest that in ASD subjects, fronto-parietal brain regions subserving memory formation and the association of contextual information are activated atypically when a social context is presented at encoding. The data add to findings from related research fields indicating that in ASD, socioemotional impairment extends into domains beyond social cognition. Increased activation in the dorsal MPFC in ASD individuals might reflect supervisory cognitive processes related to the suppression of a distracting non-social context.
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3. Lough CL, Rice MS, Lough LG. {{Choice as a Strategy to Enhance Engagement in a Colouring Task in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders}}. {Occup Ther Int};2012 (Sep 27)
This study investigated the effect of choice on a colouring task in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Children with ASD typically have difficulty engaging in purposeful activities, which makes progress toward skill development difficult in therapeutic or educational settings. Participants included 26 male and female children with ASD, aged 8 to 15 years. In this counterbalanced design, participants either chose which picture to colour or were given a picture to colour. When given a choice, participants spent more time colouring (p = 0.005) and used more coloured markers (p = 0.016), but did not colour more of the page (p = 498). This study demonstrated that when offering a choice in a colouring activity, children with ASD participated and engaged in the colouring task for a longer period of time and used a larger array of markers while doing so. However, associated small effect sizes require caution with generalization. Future research should focus upon offering choice with other age-appropriate activities to determine its efficacy as a useful strategy for facilitating activity engagement for children with ASD. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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4. Weisberg J, Milleville SC, Kenworthy L, Wallace GL, Gotts SJ, Beauchamp MS, Martin A. {{Social Perception in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Impaired Category Selectivity for Dynamic but not Static Images in Ventral Temporal Cortex}}. {Cereb Cortex};2012 (Sep 26)
Studies of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) reveal dysfunction in the neural systems mediating object processing (particularly faces) and social cognition, but few investigations have systematically assessed the specificity of the dysfunction. We compared cortical responses in typically developing adolescents and those with ASD to stimuli from distinct conceptual domains known to elicit category-related activity in separate neural systems. In Experiment 1, subjects made category decisions to photographs, videos, and point-light displays of people and tools. In Experiment 2, subjects interpreted displays of simple, geometric shapes in motion depicting social or mechanical interactions. In both experiments, we found a selective deficit in the ASD subjects for dynamic social stimuli (videos and point-light displays of people, moving geometric shapes), but not static images, in the functionally localized lateral region of the right fusiform gyrus, including the fusiform face area. In contrast, no group differences were found in response to either static images or dynamic stimuli in other brain regions associated with face and social processing (e.g. posterior superior temporal sulcus, amygdala), suggesting disordered connectivity between these regions and the fusiform gyrus in ASD. This possibility was confirmed by functional connectivity analysis.
