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Professor Andrew Whitehouse tells how Australia’s first national guideline for the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is going to transform the way the condition is assessed and managed, vastly improving the experience for families.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a group of neurodevelopmental disorders which are more common in males. The 'prenatal sex steroid' hypothesis links excessive sex-steroid exposure during foetal life with the behavioural differences observed in ASD. However, the reason why sex steroid exposure may be excessive remains unclear. Epidemiological studies have identified several environmental risk factors associated with ASD, including developmental vitamin D (DVD) deficiency.
Chloe recently decided to bake cupcakes to sell to her school friends and teachers and it was all for a cause very close to her heart - autism research.
The Kids Research Institute Australia has two researchers and an innovative science engagement initiative as finalists in the 2017 Premier’s Science Awards.
Autism researchers from The Kids Research Institute Australia have called for the term ‘high functioning autism’ to be abandoned because of the misleading and potentially harmful expectations it creates around the abilities of children on the autism spectrum.
Researchers at The Kids Research Institute Australia and University of Western Australia have recently published data describing the use of an attention training game designed for school-aged children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
The CliniKids team has reimagined how allied health services for children with autism spectrum disorder or developmental delays are delivered.
Several researchers have hypothesised that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show encoding delays in their obligatory event-related potentials (ERPs)/ event-related fields (ERFs) for low-level auditory information compared to neurotypical (NT) samples. However, empirical research has yielded varied findings, such as low-level auditory processing in ASD samples being unimpaired, superior, or impaired compared to NT samples. Diverse outcomes have also been reported for studies investigating ASD-NT differences in functional lateralisation of delays.
Delays within the motor domain are often overlooked as an early surveillance marker for autism. The present study evaluated motor difficulties and its potential as an early predictive marker for later autism likelihood in a cohort of infants showing early behavioral signs of autism aged 9-14 months. The motor domain was evaluated using the motor subscales of the Mullen Scales of Early Learning at baseline, and at a 6-month follow-up.
The aim of this study was to understand the challenges experienced by families obtaining a diagnosis and therapy for developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Parents of 435 children aged 4-18 years with persistent motor difficulties consistent with a diagnosis of DCD completed an online survey. Diagnostic timeline and diagnostic label/s received were examined, along with therapies accessed.