Veritable Untruths: Autistic Traits and the Processing of Deception

How do we decide whether a statement is literally true? Here, we contrast participants’ eventual evaluations of a speaker’s meaning with the real-time processes of comprehension. We record participants’ eye movements as they respond to potentially misleading instructions to click on one of two objects which might be concealing treasure (the treasure is behind thee, uh, hat). Participants are less likely to click on the named object when the instructions are disfluent. However, when hearing disfluent utterances, a tendency to fixate the named object early increases with participants’ autism quotient scores. This suggests that, even where utterances are equivalently understood, the processes by which interpretations are achieved vary across individuals.

Autistic traits in offspring of schizophrenic patients in comparison to those of normal population: a case-control study

Background Autism is not a discreet condition and those families members with autistic propend are more likely to display autistic symptoms with a wide range of severity, even below the threshold for diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. Even with a parental history of schizophrenia, the likelihood of autistic spectrum disorder was found to be 3-fold greater. The aim of this study is to assess autistic traits among offspring of schizophrenic patients in the age group from 4 to 11 years and compare it in the offspring of normal individuals, and its association with the sociodemographic data. To determine whether schizophrenic parents are a risk factor to autistic traits in their children. Results There was a statistically significant (P < 0.05*) increase in Autism Quotient Child scores of the case group where 47.2% had a score equal or more than the cutoff point (76), while only 17 19.4% of the control group had the same score with odds = 3.71 indicating that children of schizophrenic parents 18 were three times likely to have Autism Quotient-Child score greater than or equal to the cutoff point (76) than 19 children of healthy parents. No statistically significant association (P ≥ 0.05) was found between all 20 sociodemographic characteristics and Autism Quotient-Child scores among the case group except for family 21 income and social class where there was a statistically significant association (P < 0.05) between insufficient income 22 and low social class and higher Autism Quotient-Child score (≥ 76). Conclusions Children of schizophrenic parents are at high risk to have autistic traits than children of normal parents.

Beyond the interpersonal core of Schizotypal Personality and Autism: Associations between autism and schizotypal traits are not merely due to Social Anxiety.

Several lines of research have established overlap between autistic and schizotypal traits but there have been limited attempts to identify variables that might explain this overlap. As both sets of traits are individually associated with social anxiety, we investigated whether social anxiety traits could explain the overlap between them. To this end, the Autism Quotient (AQ), Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire Brief-Revised (SPQ-BR) and Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale-Self Report (LSAS-SR) were administered to a non-clinical population of 345 adults. Correlational analyses revealed strong, positive correlations between autistic, schizotypal, and social anxiety traits. After controlling for social anxiety, the association between total AQ and SPQ-BR scores remained modest and significant, suggesting that their association is not simply due to a shared association with social anxiety.

Autism Traits Predict Self-reported Executive Functioning Deficits in Everyday Life and an Aversion to Exercise

Are Autism Quotient (AQ) scores related to executive functioning (EF)? We sampled 200 students of normal intelligence and examined the relationship between AQ scores and: (a) 5 self-ratings of EF, (b) 5 performance-based measures of EF, and (c) 5 types of activities or experiences that are assumed to recruit EF and sometimes enhance EF. Our findings reveal that as AQ scores increase, self-rated EF ability decreases. AQ scores and self-reported EF measures do not correlate with objective EF task performance. Furthermore, AQ scores were shown to be negatively associated with many specific types of physical activity. As AQ scores increase, individuals report fewer positive reasons for exercise and more rationalizations for not engaging in more exercise.

Exploring the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire, Clinical Impairment Assessment, and Autism Quotient to Identify Eating Disorder Vulnerability: A Cluster Analysis

Eating disorders are very complicated and many factors play a role in their manifestation. Furthermore, due to the variability in diagnosis and symptoms, treatment for an eating disorder is unique to the individual. As a result, there are numerous assessment tools available, which range from brief survey questionnaires to in-depth interviews conducted by a professional. One of the many benefits to using machine learning is that it offers new insight into datasets that researchers may not previously have, particularly when compared to traditional statistical methods. The aim of this paper was to employ k-means clustering to explore the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire, Clinical Impairment Assessment, and Autism Quotient scores. The goal is to identify prevalent cluster topologies in the data, using the truth data as a means to validate identified groupings. Our results show that a model with k = 2 performs the best and clustered the dataset in the most appropriate way. This matches our truth data group labels, and we calculated our model’s accuracy at 78.125%, so we know that our model is working well. We see that the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) and Clinical Impairment Assessment (CIA) scores are, in fact, important discriminators of eating disorder behavior.

Poczucie samotności u nastolatków z zaburzeniami ze spektrum autyzmu

Jedną z cech zaburzeń ze spektrum autyzmu (Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD) są trudności w zakresie interakcji społecznych, uwzględniające deficyty w komunikacji, odwzajemnianiu emocjonalnym oraz umiejętnościach społecznych. Częste są również problemy w nawiązywaniu i podtrzymywaniu relacji społecznych oraz funkcjonowaniu w grupie rówieśników, mogące prowadzić do wysokiego poczucia samotności. Celem badania było zbadanie zależności pomiędzy poczuciem samotności, natężeniem cech zaburzeń ze spektrum autyzmu oraz funkcjonowania poznawczego – przede wszystkim w zakresie płynności słownej. W badaniu wzięło udział 50 adolescentów z zaburzeniami ze spektrum autyzmu w wieku od 13 do 19 lat oraz 50 adolescentów o typowym rozwoju. Badanie prowadzone było za pomocą metod kwestionariuszowych – użyto polskich wersji skali do pomiaru poczucia samotności Jenny De Jong Gierveld oraz kwestionariusza Autism Quotient Simona Barona-Cohena w wersji dla nastolatków. Przeprowadzono również próby mające na celu ocenę funkcjonowania poznawczego badanych, które były wykonywane podczas spotkania indywidualnego. Wyniki badania pokazały, że poczucie samotności związane jest zarówno z samym występowaniem zaburzeń ze spektrum autyzmu, jak i z ich nasileniem. Wykazano również pewne powiązania pomiędzy poczuciem samotności oraz wynikami prób poznawczych w grupie nastolatków z zaburzeniami ze spektrum autyzmu. Na podstawie uzyskanych wyników można stwierdzić, że postrzeganie samotności w przypadku adolescentów z zaburzeniami ze spektrum autyzmu może być moderowane przez ich poziom funkcjonowania poznawczego. Wnioski te wymagają jednak przeprowadzenia dalszych badań z uwzględnieniem dodatkowych pomiarów dotyczących funkcjonowania poznawczego.

AMBRA1, Autophagy, and the Extreme Male Brain Theory of Autism

The extreme male brain theory of autism posits that its male bias is mediated by exaggeration of male-biased sex differences in the expression of autism-associated traits found in typical populations. The theory is supported by extensive phenotypic evidence, but no genes have yet been described with properties that fit its predictions. The autophagy-associated gene AMBRA1 represents one of the top genome-wide “hits” in recent GWAS studies of schizophrenia, shows sex-differential expression, and has been linked with autism risk and traits in humans and mice, especially or exclusively among females. We genotyped the AMBRA1 autism-risk SNP in a population of typical humans who were scored for the dimensional expression of autistic and schizotypal traits. Females, but not males, homozygous for the GG genotype showed a significant increase in score for the single trait, the Autism Quotient-Imagination subscale, that exhibits a strong, significant male bias in typical populations. As such, females with this genotype resembled males for this highly sexually dimorphic, autism-associated phenotype. These findings support the extreme male brain hypothesis and indicate that sex-specific genetic effects can mediate aspects of risk for autism.