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Utilising Behavioural and Sensory Profiles and Associated Perinatal Factors to Identify Meaningful Subgroups in Autism Spectrum DisorderThe heterogeneity of autism spectrum disorder clinically and aetiologically hinders intervention matching and prediction of outcomes. This study investigated if the behavioural, sensory, and perinatal factor profiles of autistic children could be used to identify distinct subgroups. Participants on the autism spectrum aged 2 to 17 years and their families were sourced via the Australian Autism Biobank.
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Investigating the impact of developmental coordination difficulties across home, school, and community settings: Findings from the Australian Impact for DCD surveyTo evaluate the participation difficulties experienced by children with developmental coordination disorder in home, school, and community environments.
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The valence-specific empathy imbalance hypothesis of autism: The role of autistic traits, alexithymia, emotion dysregulation, and gender differencesIndividuals exhibiting pronounced autistic traits (e.g., social differences and specialised interests) may struggle with cognitive empathy (i.e., the ability to infer others' emotions), although the relationship with affective empathy (i.e., the ability to share others' emotions) is less clear in that higher levels of autistic traits may be linked with increased affective empathy for negative emotions but reduced affective empathy for positive emotions. The current study investigates this empathy profile and whether alexithymia and emotion dysregulation help to explain it.
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Psychosocial wellbeing, parental concerns, and familial impact of children with developmental coordination disorderDevelopmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a neurodevelopmental condition impacting motor skill acquisition and competence. While previous studies have identified adverse psychosocial outcomes in DCD, they are limited by small or population-screened, community-based samples.
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Prenatal depressive symptoms and childhood development of brain limbic and default mode network structurePrenatal depressive symptoms are linked to negative child behavioral and cognitive outcomes and predict later psychopathology in adolescent children. Prior work links prenatal depressive symptoms to child brain structure in regions like the amygdala; however, the relationship between symptoms and the development of brain structure over time remains unclear.
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Continuity of temperament subgroup classifications from infancy to toddlerhood in the context of early autism traitsOur previous cross-sectional investigation (Chetcuti et al., 2020) showed that infants with autism traits could be divided into distinct subgroups based on temperament. This longitudinal study builds on this existing work by exploring the continuity of temperament subgroup classifications and their associations with behavioral/clinical phenotypic features from infancy to toddlerhood.
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Perceived Support Needs of School-Aged Young People on the Autism Spectrum and Their CaregiversWith increasing demands for health, disability and education services, innovative approaches can help distribute limited resources according to need. Despite an increased focus on support needs within the clinical pathway and policy landscape, the body of research knowledge on this topic is at a relatively early stage. However, there appears to be a sense of unmet support needs and dissatisfaction with the provision of required support following an autism diagnosis amongst caregivers of young people on the spectrum.
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An investigation of a novel broad autism phenotype: increased facial masculinity among parents of children on the autism spectrumThe broad autism phenotype commonly refers to sub-clinical levels of autistic-like behaviour and cognition presented in biological relatives of autistic people. In a recent study, we reported findings suggesting that the broad autism phenotype may also be expressed in facial morphology, specifically increased facial masculinity.
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Evidence that infant and early childhood developmental impairments are associated with hallucinatory experiences: Results from a large, population-based cohort studyCognitive and motor dysfunction are hallmark features of the psychosis continuum, and have been detected during late childhood and adolescence in youth who report psychotic experiences (PE). However, previous investigations have not explored infancy and early childhood development.
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Acoustic characterization and machine prediction of perceived masculinity and femininity in adultsPrevious research has found that human voice can provide reliable information to be used for gender identification with a high level of accuracy. In social psychology, perceived masculinity and femininity (masculinity and femininity rated by humans) has often been considered an important feature when investigating the influence of vocal features on social behaviours.