Exploring social cognition and romantic self-efficacy in autistic young adults: Better social awareness is associated with lower confidence.

Background: Despite misconceptions, autistic young adults are interested in romantic relationships (Fernandes et al., 2016; Hancock et al., 2019; Mehzabin & Stokes, 2011).

Perceptions of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder on How Health Care Providers Address Sexual Health.

Objective: Medical providers report barriers that prevent them from discussing sexual health with patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). No investigations have examined the perspectives of adults with ASD about their sexual health care experiences.

Methods: Twenty-five verbal young adults diagnosed with ASD and 40 young adults without ASD participated.

Early emotional caregiving environment and associations with memory performance and hippocampal volume in adolescents with prenatal drug exposure.

Early adversities, including prenatal drug exposure (PDE) and a negative postnatal emotional caregiving environment, impact children's long-term development. The protracted developmental course of memory and its underlying neural systems offer a valuable framework for understanding the longitudinal associations of pre- and postnatal factors on children with PDE. This study longitudinally examines memory and hippocampal development in 69 parent-child dyads to investigate how the early caregiving emotional environment affects children with PDE's neural and cognitive systems.

Sexual Knowledge, Experiences, and Pragmatic Language in Adults With and Without Autism: Implications for Sex Education.

Autistic adults have similar levels of desire for sexual and romantic relationships as their non-autistic peers. However, autistic adults are less likely to be in relationships and have less dating experience. We compared sexual knowledge, experiences, and pragmatic language ability in a community sample of young adults with (n = 27, mean age = 22.

Inhibition in developmental disorders: A comparison of inhibition profiles between children with autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and comorbid symptom presentation.

Many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) also have symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Children with ASD and ADHD often experience difficulties with inhibition. This study had the goal of understanding inhibition in children with ASD, ADHD, ASD + ADHD, and children who are typically developing (TD) using tasks that measured several aspects of inhibition.