Characteristics of children attending an autism specific early learning and care setting prior to and following introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Background: The rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has transformed the Australian funding landscape for individuals with disability and their families. This study examined whether the profiles of autistic children and their families accessing an early intervention (EI) setting have changed following its introduction.

Methods: The cognition and behavioural profiles of children funded under the NDIS ( = 58) were compared to children who had received block government funding (= 58).

Developmental and Functional Outcomes Amongst Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Autistic Children.

Children typically learn by attending to other people. Autism traits may impact access to social stimuli fundamental to early learning, increasing children's likelihood of a learning disability. Recent reports have highlighted that Autistic children from minority backgrounds have a higher likelihood of co-occurring intellectual disability.

Physiological and communicative emotional disconcordance in children on the autism spectrum.

Background: Individuals on the autism spectrum commonly have differences from non-autistic people in expressing their emotions using communicative behaviors, such as facial expressions. However, it is not yet clear if this reduced expressivity stems from reduced physiological reactivity in emotional contexts or if individuals react internally, but do not show these reactions externally to others. We hypothesized that autism is characterized by a discordance between in-the-moment internal psychophysiological arousal and external communicative expressions of emotion.

Child and caregiver predictors of primary caregiver participation in families of school-aged Autistic children.

Engaging in meaningful activities (e.g., leisure, spiritual, fitness) significantly affects caregivers' quality of life (QoL), yet the determinants of participation in caregivers of Autistic children remain largely unknown.

Measuring and validating autistic burnout.

Researchers have begun to explore the characteristics and risk factors for autistic burnout, but assessment tools are lacking. Our study comprehensively examined and compared the psychometric properties of the unpublished 27-item AASPIRE Autistic Burnout Measure (ABM), and personal and work scales of the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) to evaluate their efficacy as screening measures for autistic burnout, with a group of 238 autistic adults. Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) revealed a 4-factor structure for the ABM and a 2-factor structure for the CBI personal scale (CBI-P).