Publications by authors named "H P Hobson"

When researchers write down their plans for a study ahead of time and make this public, this is called pre-registration. Pre-registration allows others to see if the researchers stuck to their original plan or changed as they went along. Pre-registration is growing in popularity but we do not know how widely it is used in autism research.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study explores how facemask usage during COVID-19 has uniquely affected autistic individuals, focusing on their sensory issues and social interactions in a masked environment.
  • - Researchers analyzed 124 social media posts from autistic individuals and created a questionnaire that gathered responses from 49 participants, revealing seven key themes around attitudes towards masks and the experience of wearing them.
  • - Findings show that while many autistic people faced sensory challenges with masks, some found benefits in not having to mask their facial expressions; however, opinions on mask exemption and compliance varied among participants.
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Background: Neurodiversity is increasingly discussed in relation to autism research and practice. However, there is a lack of scholarship concerning the neurodevelopmental condition of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and the neurodiversity movement. While this movement may hold opportunities for the DLD community, the application of the concept of neurodiversity to DLD research and practice needs consideration, as DLD and autism have very different levels of public and professional awareness and understanding.

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Background: Autistic students are particularly vulnerable to stressors within a university environment and are more likely to experience poor mental health than their non-autistic peers. Students' experiences of stigma from staff and peers, and the masking behaviors they deploy to minimize it, can also result in worsening mental health. Despite these concerns, there is a lack of tailored support for autistic students at university.

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For decades, neural suppression in early visual cortex has been thought to be fixed. But recent work has challenged this assumption by showing that suppression can be reweighted based on recent history; when pairs of stimuli are repeatedly presented together, suppression between them strengthens. Here we investigate the temporal dynamics of this process using a steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) paradigm that provides a time-resolved, direct index of suppression between pairs of stimuli flickering at different frequencies (5 and 7 Hz).

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