1. Baller JB, Barry CL, Shea K, Walker MM, Ouellette R, Mandell DS. {{Assessing early implementation of state autism insurance mandates}}. {Autism};2015 (Nov 27)
In the United States, health insurance coverage for autism spectrum disorder treatments has been historically limited. In response, as of 2015, 40 states and Washington, DC, have passed state autism insurance mandates requiring many health plans in the private insurance market to cover autism diagnostic and treatment services. This study examined five states’ experiences implementing autism insurance mandates. Semi-structured, key-informant interviews were conducted with 17 participants representing consumer advocacy organizations, provider organizations, and health insurance companies. Overall, participants thought that the mandates substantially affected the delivery of autism services. While access to autism treatment services has increased as a result of implementation of state mandates, states have struggled to keep up with the demand for services. Participants provided specific information about barriers and facilitators to meeting this demand. Understanding of key informants’ perceptions about states’ experiences implementing autism insurance mandates is useful for other states considering adopting or expanding mandates or other policies to expand access to autism treatment services.
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2. Benson V, Castelhano MS, Howard PL, Latif N, Rayner K. {{Looking, seeing and believing in autism: Eye movements reveal how subtle cognitive processing differences impact in the social domain}}. {Autism Res};2015 (Nov 28)
Adults with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) viewed scenes with people in them, while having their eye movements recorded. The task was to indicate, using a button press, whether the pictures were normal, or in some way weird or odd. Oddities in the pictures were categorized as violations of either perceptual or social norms. Compared to a Typically Developed (TD) control group, the ASD participants were equally able to categorize the scenes as odd or normal, but they took longer to respond. The eye movement patterns showed that the ASD group made more fixations and revisits to the target areas in the odd scenes compared with the TD group. Additionally, when the ASD group first fixated the target areas in the scenes, they failed to initially detect the social oddities. These two findings have clear implications for processing difficulties in ASD for the social domain, where it is important to detect social cues on-line, and where there is little opportunity to go back and recheck possible cues in fast dynamic interactions. Autism Res 2015. (c) 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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3. Ewbank MP, von dem Hagen EA, Powell TE, Henson RN, Calder AJ. {{The effect of perceptual expectation on repetition suppression to faces is not modulated by variation in autistic traits}}. {Cortex};2015 (Oct 31)
There is substantial variation in the magnitude of the repetition suppression (RS) effects across individuals; however the causes of this variation remain unclear. In a recent study, we found that RS in occipitotemporal cortex was negatively related to individual variation in autistic traits in a neurotypical population. Recent proposals have considered autistic behaviours within a Bayesian framework, suggesting that individuals with autism may have ‘attenuated priors’ (i.e., their perception is less influenced by prior information). Predictive coding represents a neural instantiation of Bayesian inference, and characterises RS as reduction in prediction error between ‘top-down’ (prior beliefs) and ‘bottom-up’ (stimulus related) inputs. In accordance with this, evidence shows that RS is greater when repetition of a stimulus is expected relative to when it is unexpected. Here, using an established paradigm which manipulates the probability of stimulus repetition, we investigated the effect of perceptual expectation on RS in a group of neurotypical individuals varying on a measure of autistic traits. We predicted that the magnitude of the perceptual expectation effect would be negatively related to individual differences in autistic traits. We found a significant effect of perceptual expectation on RS in face-selective regions (i.e., greater RS when repetitions were expected relative to unexpected). However, there was no evidence of a relationship between autistic traits and the magnitude of this effect in any face-selective region of interest (ROI). These findings provide a challenge for the proposal that autism spectrum conditions (ASC) may be associated with the attenuated influence of prior information.
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4. Landry O, Al-Taie S. {{A Meta-analysis of the Wisconsin Card Sort Task in Autism}}. {J Autism Dev Disord};2015 (Nov 27)
We conducted a meta-analysis of 31 studies, spanning 30 years, utilizing the WCST in participants with autism. We calculated Cohen’s d effect sizes for four measures of performance: sets completed, perseveration, failure-to-maintain-set, and non-perseverative errors. The average weighted effect size ranged from 0.30 to 0.74 for each measure, all statistically greater than 0. No evidence was found for reduced impairment when WCST is administered by computer. Age and PIQ predicted perseverative error rates, while VIQ predicted non-perseverative error rates, and both perseverative and non-perseverative error rates in turn predicted number of sets completed. No correlates of failure-to-maintain set errors were found; further research is warranted on this aspect of WCST performance in autism.
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5. Pamphlett R, Kum Jew S. {{Locus ceruleus neurons in people with autism contain no histochemically-detectable mercury}}. {Biometals};2015 (Nov 27)
Exposure to environmental mercury has been proposed to play a part in autism. Mercury is selectively taken up by the human locus ceruleus, a region of the brain that has been implicated in autism. We therefore looked for the presence of mercury in the locus ceruleus of people who had autism, using the histochemical technique of autometallography which can detect nanogram amounts of mercury in tissues. In addition, we sought evidence of damage to locus ceruleus neurons in autism by immunostaining for hyperphosphorylated tau. No mercury was found in any neurons of the locus ceruleus of 6 individuals with autism (5 male, 1 female, age range 16-48 years). Mercury was present in locus ceruleus neurons in 7 of 11 (64 %) age-matched control individuals who did not have autism, which is significantly more than in individuals with autism. No increase in numbers of locus ceruleus neurons containing hyperphosphorylated tau was detected in people with autism. In conclusion, most people with autism have not been exposed early in life to quantities of mercury large enough to be found later in adult locus ceruleus neurons. Human locus ceruleus neurons are sensitive indicators of mercury exposure, and mercury appears to remain in these neurons indefinitely, so these findings do not support the hypothesis that mercury neurotoxicity plays a role in autism.
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6. Parsons TD, Carlew AR. {{Bimodal Virtual Reality Stroop for Assessing Distractor Inhibition in Autism Spectrum Disorders}}. {J Autism Dev Disord};2015 (Nov 27)
Executive functioning deficits found in college students with ASD may have debilitating effects on their everyday activities. Although laboratory studies tend to report unimpaired inhibition in autism, studies of resistance to distractor inhibition reveal difficulties. In two studies, we compared a Virtual Classroom task with paper-and-pencil and computerized Stroop modalities in typically developing individuals and individuals with ASD. While significant differences were not observed between ASD and neurotypical groups on the paper-and-pencil and computerized task, individuals with ASD performed significantly worse on the virtual task with distractors. Findings suggest the potential of the Virtual Classroom Bimodal Stroop task to distinguish between prepotent response inhibition (non-distraction condition) and resistance to distractor inhibition (distraction condition) in adults with high functioning autism.
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7. Sheppard DP, Kvavilashvili L, Ryder N. {{Event-based prospective memory in mildly and severely autistic children}}. {Res Dev Disabil};2015 (Nov 29);49-50:22-33.
BACKGROUND: There is a growing body of research into the development of prospective memory (PM) in typically developing children but research is limited in autistic children (Aut) and rarely includes children with more severe symptoms. AIMS: This study is the first to specifically compare event-based PM in severely autistic children to mildly autistic and typically developing children. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Fourteen mildly autistic children and 14 severely autistic children, aged 5-13 years, were matched for educational attainment with 26 typically developing children aged 5-6 years. Three PM tasks and a retrospective memory task were administered. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Results showed that severely autistic children performed less well than typically developing children on two PM tasks but mildly autistic children did not differ from either group. No group differences were found on the most motivating (a toy reward) task. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The findings suggest naturalistic tasks and motivation are important factors in PM success in severely autistic children and highlights the need to consider the heterogeneity of autism and symptom severity in relation to performance on event-based PM tasks.
