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With 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.
This study aimed to explore the rates of motor difficulties in children from the Australian Autism Biobank, and how early motor concerns impacted on children functionally.
Our 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.
In the disability sector globally, and specifically in Australia, assessments of functioning have become key to diagnostic processes, and accessing therapy and funding. Over half of all individuals accessing support through Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme have a neurodevelopmental condition diagnosis.
Evidence suggests that the earlier supports are provided to young Autistic children, the better the overall outcomes. Supports have typically only been available after an autism diagnosis but with increased knowledge about early developmental trajectories, clinical supports can now be offered prediagnosis for infants showing early autism features and/or those with a family history of autism.
Individuals 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.
LiL' STEPS (Language development & Intervention Lab's SupporTing Early social-communication and language by Promoting caregiver Sensitive responsiveness) is a novel, manualized, caregiver-mediated early support program developed in India and delivered online for infants at elevated familial likelihood for autism. The program has been found to be feasible and acceptable. The preliminary efficacy of the LiL' STEPS program, which remains to be evaluated, was assessed in this study using a feasibility randomized controlled trial design.
Children with neurodevelopmental disorders often experience difficulties in acquiring and executing movement skills. Although the motor profiles of neurodivergent children frequently overlap, rigid conceptual distinctions between diagnostic labels have been imposed by traditional categorical approaches to taxonomy. An alternative transdiagnostic approach is proposed to better represent the similarities between presentations.
Recent studies report conflicting results regarding the relationship between labour epidural analgesia (LEA) in mothers and neurodevelopmental disorders in their offspring. We evaluated behavioural and neuropsychological test scores in children of mothers who used LEA.
To evaluate the participation difficulties experienced by children with developmental coordination disorder in home, school, and community environments.