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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.
Alexithymia—a trait characterized by difficulties in emotion processing—is of high interest in the autism field. However, the lack of validated alexithymia measures for autistic individuals limits progress. This study aimed to address this gap by examining the psychometric properties of the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) across autistic and non-autistic samples. Using the PAQ, we investigated how alexithymia manifests in autistic individuals and its links with poor mental health outcomes (anxiety).
We do not know much about what support services people think are okay for young autistic children. This study was a survey of 253 people. We asked autistic adults, parents, and professionals from Australia and New Zealand whether they thought it was okay to provide support services to autistic children.
Maternal immune activation and prenatal maternal stress are well-studied risk factors for psychiatric conditions such as autism and schizophrenia. Animal studies have proposed the gut microbiome as a mechanism underlying this association and have found that risk factor-related gut microbiome alterations persist in the adult offspring.
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.
Prescriptions and use of medications to treat mental health conditions in young autistic populations are inconsistent worldwide. This makes it hard to compare findings from international studies to the Australian autistic population, where there are limited relevant studies. Apart from risperidone, there are no other medications specified for direct use in autistic persons. This study aims to gain initial broad understanding of the use of medications, commonly prescribed for mental health conditions, specifically by autistics under the age of 21 years.
Parenting is a rewarding experience but is not without its challenges. Parents of Autistic children face additional challenges, and as a result can experience lower levels of wellbeing and more mental health problems (i.e., depression, anxiety, stress). Previous studies have identified concurrent correlates of wellbeing and mental health.
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.
The number of words children produce (expressive vocabulary) and understand (receptive vocabulary) changes rapidly during early development, partially due to genetic factors. Here, we performed a meta-genome-wide association study of vocabulary acquisition and investigated polygenic overlap with literacy, cognition, developmental phenotypes, and neurodevelopmental conditions, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
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.