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A reliable and valid diagnostic classification system is pivotal for guiding clinical decision-making, facilitating rigorous and reproducible research findings, informing population-level health planning and resource allocation, and promoting well-being.
The 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.
Manifestations of insistence on sameness and circumscribed interests are complex, with individuals varying considerably, not only in the types of behaviours they express, but also in terms of a behaviour's frequency, intensity, trajectory, adaptive benefits, and impacts.
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.
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.
Australia’s first national guideline for supporting the learning, participation and wellbeing of autistic children and their families.
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.
We tested the potential for Gazefinder eye-tracking to support early autism identification, including feasible use with infants, and preliminary concurrent validity of trial-level gaze data against clinical assessment scores. We embedded the ~ 2-min 'Scene 1S4' protocol within a comprehensive clinical assessment for 54 consecutively-referred, clinically-indicated infants (prematurity-corrected age 9-14 months).
Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are increasingly utilised within healthcare settings to enhance decision making. However, few studies have investigated their application in the context of clinical services for autistic people, with no research to date exploring the perspectives of the key stakeholders who are, or in the future may be, impacted by their use.
Most support programmes for Autistic children are available only after they are diagnosed. Research suggests that parenting supports may be helpful for parents and their infants, when provided in the first 2 years of life - before a formal diagnosis is given, but when information suggests an infant is more likely to be Autistic. However, we do not know how acceptable these types of supports might be to the Autistic and autism communities.