The Influence of Language Context on Repetitive Speech Use in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Purpose Although repetitive speech is a hallmark characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the contributing factors that influence repetitive speech use remain unknown. The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine if the language context impacts the amount and type of repetitive speech produced by children with ASD. Method As part of a broader word-learning study, 11 school-age children with ASD participated in two different language contexts: storytelling and play. Previously collected language samples were transcribed and coded for four types of repetitive speech: immediate echolalia, delayed echolalia, verbal stereotypy, and vocal stereotypy. The rates and proportions of repetitive speech were compared across the two language contexts using Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests. Individual characteristics were further explored using Spearman correlations. Results The children produced lower rates of repetitive speech during the storytelling context than the play-based context. Only immediate echolalia differed between the two contexts based on rate and approached significance based on proportion, with more immediate echolalia produced in the play-based context than in the storytelling context. There were no significant correlations between repetitive speech and measures of social responsiveness, expressive or receptive vocabulary, or nonverbal intelligence. Conclusions The children with ASD produced less immediate echolalia in the storytelling context than in the play-based context. Immediate echolalia use was not related to social skills, vocabulary, or nonverbal IQ scores. These findings offer valuable insights into better understanding repetitive speech use in children with ASD

Attenuation of typical sex differences in 800 adults with autism vs. 3,900 controls.

Sex differences have been reported in autistic traits and systemizing (male advantage), and empathizing (female advantage) among typically developing individuals. In individuals with autism, these cognitive-behavioural profiles correspond to predictions from the "extreme male brain" (EMB) theory of autism (extreme scores on autistic traits and systemizing, below average on empathizing). Sex differences within autism, however, have been under-investigated. Here we show in 811 adults (454 females) with autism and 3,906 age-matched typical control adults (2,562 females) who completed the Empathy Quotient (EQ), the Systemizing Quotient-Revised (SQ-R), and the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), that typical females on average scored higher on the EQ, typical males scored higher on the SQ-R and AQ, and both males and females with autism showed a shift toward the extreme of the "male profile" on these measures and in the distribution of "brain types" (the discrepancy between standardized EQ and SQ-R scores). Further, normative sex differences are attenuated but not abolished in adults with autism. The findings provide strong support for the EMB theory of autism, and highlight differences between males and females with autism.This study received funding from the UK Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and the Autism Research Trust. Meng-Chuan Lai was supported by the William Binks Autism Neuroscience Fellowship, the European Autism Interventions - A Multicentre Study for Developing New Medications (EU-AIMS), and Wolfson College, Cambridge.This is the final published version. It's also available from PLOS at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102251

Do adults with high functioning autism or Asperger Syndrome differ in empathy and emotion recognition?

The present study examined whether adults with high functioning autism (HFA) showed greater difficulties in (i) their self-reported ability to empathise with others and/or (ii) their ability to read mental states in others’ eyes than adults with Asperger syndrome (AS). The Empathy Quotient (EQ) and ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test (Eyes Test) were compared in 43 adults with AS and 43 adults with HFA. No significant difference was observed on EQ score between groups, while adults with AS performed significantly better on the Eyes Test than those with HFA. This suggests that adults with HFA may need more support, particularly in mentalizing and complex emotion recognition, and raises questions about the existence of subgroups within autism spectrum conditions

We All Need Somebody to Lean On: Using the Law to Nurture Our Children, Beginning with Third-Party Visitation

Perhaps one of the single most important aspects of a healthy childhood is emotional support from healthy caregivers. As it stands, New York’s visitation law prohibits third-party caregivers from stepping in and providing children with this important psychological and emotional need by automatically denying them standing to seek visitation in court. In New York, third-party standing for visitation is denied solely on a procedural basis, irrespective of the child’s personal familial situation, namely whether their parents are completely unavailable. Specifically, when a child’s parents become unavailable due to death, incarceration or otherwise, and such child becomes a ward of the foster care system, the child’s aunt, uncle, or other third-party caregiver cannot petition for visitation of that child under current New York law. As a result, the child is effectively deprived of necessary emotional connections unless the third-party caregiver decides to formally adopt him or her. New York’s Domestic Relations Law does not explicitly prohibit third-party visitation, but rather this current, nonsensical application of New York visitation law has developed through the judiciary, which is supposed to serve as these children’s last line of defense. Thus, this piece respectfully calls for the court of this progressive State to join other neighboring states in fostering relationships between children and healthy caregivers by awarding standing for visitation to third-parties when both of the child’s parents are completely unavailable to take care of them

D-cycloserine augmentation of exposure-based cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and posttraumatic stress disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data

Importance: Whether and under which conditions D-cycloserine (DCS) augments the effects of exposure-based cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and posttraumatic stress disorders is unclear. Objective: To clarify whether DCS is superior to placebo in augmenting the effects of cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and posttraumatic stress disorders and to evaluate whether antidepressants interact with DCS and the effect of potential moderating variables. Data Sources: PubMed, EMBASE, and PsycINFO were searched from inception to February 10, 2016. Reference lists of previous reviews and meta-analyses and reports of randomized clinical trials were also checked. Study Selection: Studies were eligible for inclusion if they were (1) double-blind randomized clinical trials of DCS as an augmentation strategy for exposure-based cognitive behavior therapy and (2) conducted in humans diagnosed as having specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or posttraumatic stress disorder. Data Extraction and Synthesis: Raw data were obtained from the authors and quality controlled. Data were ranked to ensure a consistent metric across studies (score range, 0-100). We used a 3-level multilevel model nesting repeated measures of outcomes within participants, who were nested within studies. Results: Individual participant data were obtained for 21 of 22 eligible trials, representing 1047 of 1073 eligible participants. When controlling for antidepressant use, participants receiving DCS showed greater improvement from pretreatment to posttreatment (mean difference, -3.62; 95% CI, -0.81 to -6.43; P = .01; d = -0.25) but not from pretreatment to midtreatment (mean difference, -1.66; 95% CI, -4.92 to 1.60; P = .32; d = -0.14) or from pretreatment to follow-up (mean difference, -2.98, 95% CI, -5.99 to 0.03; P = .05; d = -0.19). Additional analyses showed that participants assigned to DCS were associated with lower symptom severity than those assigned to placebo at posttreatment and at follow-up. Antidepressants did not moderate the effects of DCS. None of the prespecified patient-level or study-level moderators was associated with outcomes. Conclusions and Relevance: D-cycloserine is associated with a small augmentation effect on exposure-based therapy. This effect is not moderated by the concurrent use of antidepressants. Further research is needed to identify patient and/or therapy characteristics associated with DCS response.2018-05-0

The evolution of marine larval dispersal kernels in spatially structured habitats: Analytical models, individual-based simulations, and comparisons with empirical estimates.

Author Posting. © University of Chicago Press, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of University of Chicago Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Shaw, A. K., D'Aloia, C. C., & Buston, P. M. The evolution of marine larval dispersal kernels in spatially structured habitats: Analytical models, individual-based simulations, and comparisons with empirical estimates. American Naturalist, 193(3), (2019):424-435, doi:10.1086/701667.Understanding the causes of larval dispersal is a major goal of marine ecology, yet most research focuses on proximate causes. Here we ask how ultimate, evolutionary causes affect dispersal. Building on Hamilton and May’s classic 1977 article “Dispersal in Stable Habitats,” we develop analytic and simulation models for the evolution of dispersal kernels in spatially structured habitats. First, we investigate dispersal in a world without edges and find that most offspring disperse as far as possible, opposite the pattern of empirical data. Adding edges to our model world leads to nearly all offspring dispersing short distances, again a mismatch with empirical data. Adding resource heterogeneity improves our results: most offspring disperse short distances with some dispersing longer distances. Finally, we simulate dispersal evolution in a real seascape in Belize and find that the simulated dispersal kernel and an empirical dispersal kernel from that seascape both have the same shape, with a high level of short-distance dispersal and a low level of long-distance dispersal. The novel contributions of this work are to provide a spatially explicit analytic extension of Hamilton and May’s 1977 work, to demonstrate that our spatially explicit simulations and analytic models provide equivalent results, and to use simulation approaches to investigate the evolution of dispersal kernel shape in spatially complex habitats. Our model could be modified in various ways to investigate dispersal evolution in other species and seascapes, providing new insights into patterns of marine larval dispersal.We thank S. Levin, M. Neubert, S. Proulx, L. Sullivan, R. Warner, and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. This work was carried out in part using computing resources at the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. The project was supported by a start-up award from the University of Minnesota to A.K.S. and a National Science Foundation award (OCE-1260424) to P.M.B. and colleagues; C.C.D. was supported by the Weston Howland Junior Postdoctoral Scholarship from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.2020-01-1

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Abilities to explicitly and implicitly infer intentions from actions in adults with autism spectrum disorder

Previous research suggests that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) might be associated with impairments on implicit but not explicit mentalizing tasks. However, such comparisons are made difficult by the heterogeneity of stimuli and the techniques used to measure mentalizing capabilities. We tested the abilities of 34 individuals (17 with ASD) to derive intentions from others’ actions during both explicit and implicit tasks and tracked their eye-movements. Adults with ASD displayed explicit but not implicit mentalizing deficits. Adults with ASD displayed typical fixation patterns during both implicit and explicit tasks. These results illustrate an explicit mentalizing deficit in adults with ASD, which cannot be attributed to differences in fixation patterns

Correction to: The relevance of the interpersonal theory of suicide for predicting past-year and lifetime suicidality in autistic adults (Molecular Autism, (2022), 13, 1, (14), 10.1186/s13229-022-00495-5)

Following publication of the original article [1], the authors reported missing information in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section. The corrected ‘Acknowledgements’ section reads: We thank our participants for their generosity in taking part in the present research and for their helpful feedback towards this and future research. We would like to thank the ACORN panel at Bournemouth University for the funding this research, and our supportive colleagues. Special thanks goes to Rebecca Ellis for her patience in assisting with participant payments. We thank our colleagues at the Autism Research Centre who helped us recruit through their participant panel; the staff at Autistica who allowed us to advertise to their research network; moderators and owners of Facebook groups who were willing to let us advertise our study. Dr. Moseley thanks Dr. Sarah George, Dr. Helen Bolderston, and Dr. Cécile Bardon for their advice around ensuring the safety of participants, with especial thanks to Dr. Bardon for her warm encouragement. Finally, the authors remember all autistic people whose lives were lost to suicide, both within our participant cohort and the broader autistic community. The original article [1] has been updated

Correction: The overlap between autistic spectrum conditions and borderline personality disorder.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184447.]