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Research

Autism genetics has historically attracted a substantial proportion of autism research funding internationally. However, more recently, several controversies centered on ethical conduct and lack of community consultation have emerged. This has triggered Autistic-led protests for the functional and meaningful inclusion of Autistic voices in the research design.

Research

Gathering Autistic young people's testimony is critical for understanding their lived experience of education and designing settings in which these students can thrive. Despite increasing knowledge in this field, we lack perspectives from a broad range of Autistic students which necessarily limits our ability to build inclusive, supportive environments for all. This study explored the educational experiences of preschool and school-aged Autistic students from diverse age groups, backgrounds, and educational settings.

Research

Grip strength is a proxy measure for muscular strength and a predictor for bone fracture risk among other diseases. Previous genome-wide association studies have been conducted in large cohorts of adults focusing on scores collected for the dominant hand, therefore increasing the likelihood of confounding effects by environmental factors.

Research

There is a common mischaracterisation that autistic individuals have reduced or absent empathy. Measurement issues may have influenced existing findings on the relationships between autism and empathy, and the structure of the empathy construct in autism remains unclear.

Research

This study aimed to understand how parents describe the most challenging behaviors exhibited by their children diagnosed with autism and/or ADHD, how those behaviours impact their family, and whether challenges are directly related to the core characteristics of these conditions. 

Research

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of children's autism characteristics, sensory profiles and feeding difficulties on caregiver-reported impact at mealtimes.

Research

Past research has highlighted the importance of early identification of developmental differences to improve targeted access to early interventions or supports. As such, it is of particular importance in the context of children at elevated likelihood of autism (such as where an older sibling has a diagnosis of autism), to better understand when and which early concerns are important as predictors of which children will benefit from pre-diagnostic supports.

Research

Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) contributes to widespread neurodevelopmental challenges, including reading, and has been associated with altered white matter. Here, we aimed to investigate whether arcuate fasciculus development is associated with pre-reading language skills in young children with PAE.

Research

Naturalistic developmental behavioural interventions are promising approaches for young children with, or suspected of having, autism spectrum disorder. Joint attention, symbolic play, engagement and regulation intervention (JASPER) is a well-researched naturalistic developmental behavioural intervention but, to date, no reviews have specifically evaluated its effects.

Research

Links between temperament and social-emotional difficulties are well-established in normative child development but remain poorly characterized in autism. We sought to characterize distinct temperament subgroups and their associations with concurrent internalizing and externalizing symptoms in a sample of 103 infants showing early signs of autism.