Autistic Traits and Psychosocial Predictors of Depressive Symptoms.

Higher rates of depression and of depressed mood are associated with autistic traits, and both are associated with social interaction factors, such as social self-efficacy, social motivation and loneliness. This study examined whether these social factors explain the association between autistic traits and depression. 658 participants (527 women) completed an online survey with measures of autistic traits (AQ), social self-efficacy (Social Self-Efficacy Scale), social motivation (Social Striving Assessment Scale), loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale) and depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory-II).

Social self-efficacy and mental well-being in autistic adults: Exploring the role of social identity.

In the past, research has suggested that autistic people are not able to communicate well with non-autistic people because of autistic people's communication difficulties. However, newer theories question this conclusion. It is now thought that the communication difficulties may be because autistic and non-autistic people both struggle to understand each other.

Social Impact of Recharging Activity in Long-Term HRI and Verbal Strategies to Manage User Expectations During Recharge.

Social robots perform tasks to help humans in their daily activities. However, if they fail to fulfill expectations this may affect their acceptance. This work investigates the service degradation caused by recharging, during which the robot is socially inactive.

The Influence of Prior Knowledge on Perception and Action: Relationships to Autistic Traits.

Autism is characterised by a range of perceptual and sensorimotor deficits, which might be related to abnormalities in how autistic individuals use prior knowledge. We investigated this proposition in a large non-clinical population in the context of the size-weight illusion, where individual's expectations about object weight influence their perceptions of heaviness and fingertip forces. Although there was no relationship between autistic traits and the magnitude of the illusion, we observed an inverse relationship between AQ scores and how expectations influenced initial fingertip force application.

Strange Words: Autistic Traits and the Processing of Non-Literal Language.

Previous investigations into metonymy comprehension in ASD have confounded metonymy with anaphora, and outcome with process. Here we show how these confounds may be avoided, using data from non-diagnosed participants classified using Autism Quotient. Participants read sentences containing target words with novel or established metonymic senses (e.

Can behaviour during immunisation be used to identify attachment patterns? A feasibility study.

Background: Infant attachment is a strong predictor of mental health, and current measures involve placing children into a stressful situation in order to observe how the child uses their primary caregiver to assuage their distress.

Objectives: This study aimed to explore observational correlates of attachment patterns during immunisation.

Participants And Setting: 18 parent-child pairs were included in the study.

Evidence for syntactic alignment in children with autism.

We report an experiment that examined whether children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) spontaneously converge, or align, syntactic structure with a conversational partner. Children with ASD were more likely to produce a passive structure to describe a picture after hearing their interlocutor use a passive structure to describe an unrelated picture when playing a card game. Furthermore, they converged syntactic structure with their interlocutor to the same extent as did both chronological and verbal age-matched controls.

Investigating multitasking in high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorders using the Virtual Errands Task.

Using a modified version of the Virtual Errands Task (VET; McGeorge et al. in Presence-Teleop Virtual Environ 10(4):375-383, 2001), we investigated the executive ability of multitasking in 18 high-functioning adolescents with ASD and 18 typically developing adolescents. The VET requires multitasking (Law et al.

Exploring the relationship between gestural recognition and imitation: evidence of dyspraxia in autism spectrum disorders.

In this study, the relationship between gesture recognition and imitation was explored. Nineteen individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) were compared to a control group of 23 typically developing children on their ability to imitate and recognize three gesture types (transitive, intransitive, and pantomimes). The ASD group performed more poorly than controls on all tasks of recognition and imitation.

Working memory in children with developmental disorders.

The aim of the present study was to directly compare working memory skills across students with different developmental disorders to investigate whether the uniqueness of their diagnosis would impact memory skills. The authors report findings confirming differential memory profiles on the basis of the following developmental disorders: Specific Language Impairment, Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and Asperger syndrome (AS). Specifically, language impairments were associated with selective deficits in verbal short-term and working memory, whereas motor impairments (DCD) were associated with selective deficits in visuospatial short-term and working memory.

Brief report: imitation of meaningless gestures in individuals with Asperger syndrome and High-Functioning Autism.

Nineteen people with Asperger syndrome (AS)/High-Functioning Autism (HFA) (ages 7-15) were tested on imitation of two types of meaningless gesture: hand postures and finger positions. The individuals with AS/HFA achieved lower scores in the imitation of both hand and finger positions relative to a matched neurotypical group. The between-group difference was primarily accounted for by performance on a test of visual motor integration, together with a hand imitation deficit which was specifically due to errors in body part orientation.

Text chat as a tool for referential questioning in Asperger syndrome.

Purpose: This article reports a study in which referential communication in 11 individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS) and 11 controls was compared between text chat and telephone, using a route-solving task.

Method: Participants deduced routes by asking closed questions, and the dependent variables were (a) accuracy in working out the route, (b) number of questions posed (turns taken), and (c) time taken to complete the task.

Results: Generally, individuals with AS were equally competent in solving the task in both media but less efficient than the typically developing comparison group.

How perception impacts on drawings.

In 3 experiments the authors investigate how errors in perception produce errors in drawings. In Experiment 1, when Shepard stimuli were shown as a pair of tables, participants made severe errors in trying to adjust 1 part of the stimulus to match the other. When the table legs were removed, revealing a pair of parallelograms with minimal perspective cues, the illusion was weaker.

How do individuals with Asperger syndrome respond to nonliteral language and inappropriate requests in computer-mediated communication?

Computer-mediated communication in individuals with Asperger syndrome, Tourette syndrome and normal controls was explored with a program called Bubble Dialogue (Gray, Creighton, McMahon, and Cunninghamn (1991)) in which the users type text into speech bubbles. Two scenarios, based on Happé (1994) were adapted to investigate understanding of figure of speech and sarcasm, and a third, developed by ourselves, looked at responses to inappropriate requests (lending money and disclosing home address on a first meeting). Dialogue transcripts were assessed by 62 raters who were blind to the clinical diagnoses.