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Facial asymmetry in parents of children on the autism spectrumGreater facial asymmetry has been consistently found in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) relative to children without ASD. There is substantial evidence that both facial structure and the recurrence of ASD diagnosis are highly heritable within a nuclear family. Furthermore, sub-clinical levels of autistic-like behavioural characteristics have also been reported in first-degree relatives of individuals with ASD, commonly known as the 'broad autism phenotype'.
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Performance of the Autism Observation Scale for Infants with community-ascertained infants showing early signs of autismWe investigated whether a commonly used research assessment - the Autism Observation Scale for Infants (AOSI) - accurately measures autism behaviours among infants showing early signs of autism identified within the community. The AOSI is often included in studies tracking the development of infants at increased likelihood of autism, such as the infant siblings of diagnosed children. However, the suitability of this measure has not previously been tested with community-referred infants.
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Delayed cortical processing of auditory stimuli in children with autism spectrum disorder: A meta-analysis of electrophysiological studiesSeveral 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.
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Suicide by young Australians, 2006-2015: a cross-sectional analysis of national coronial dataCitation: Hill NTM, McGorry PD, Robinson J. Suicide by young Australians, 2006–2015: a cross-sectional analysis of national coronial data. Med J Aust
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Autism and intellectual disability are differentially related to sociodemographic background at birthWe used population data on Western Australian singletons born from 1984 to 1999 (n = 398,353) to examine the sociodemographic characteristics of children...
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Fetal androgen exposure and pragmatic language ability of girls in middle childhoodPrenatal exposure to testosterone has been shown to affect fetal brain maturation as well as postnatal cognition and behavior in animal studies.
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Fetal androgen exposure and pragmatic language ability of girls in middle childhood:This is the first prospective study to identify an association between early life testosterone exposure and pragmatic language difficulties in girls
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Cerebral dominance for language function in adults with specific language impairment or autismA link between developmental language disorders and atypical cerebral lateralization has been postulated since the 1920s, but evidence has been indirect and...
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Interactions between the lipidome and genetic and environmental factors in autismAutism omics research has historically been reductionist and diagnosis centric, with little attention paid to common co-occurring conditions (for example, sleep and feeding disorders) and the complex interplay between molecular profiles and neurodevelopment, genetics, environmental factors and health. Here we explored the plasma lipidome in 765 children (485 diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)) within the Australian Autism Biobank.
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The Utility of Natural Language Samples for Assessing Communication and Language in Infants Referred with Early Signs of AutismNatural Language Sampling (NLS) offers clear potential for communication and language assessment, where other data might be difficult to interpret. We leveraged existing primary data for 18-month-olds showing early signs of autism, to examine the reliability and concurrent construct validity of NLS-derived measures coded from video-of child language, parent linguistic input, and dyadic balance of communicative interaction-against standardised assessment scores. Using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software and coding conventions, masked coders achieved good-to-excellent inter-rater agreement across all measures.