Almost all autistic youths have special interests (SIs), which are focused, intense areas of passion and interest in a particular topic. Emerging research suggests that there are gender differences in SIs among autistic youth; however, commonly used measures that assess for the presence of SIs may not fully capture the granular nature of those differences between autistic boys and girls. Characterizing these differences is important for autism identification in girls, as SIs in autistic girls may often be overlooked by caregivers, teachers, and clinicians due to their more "typical" and more socially oriented content areas compared to autistic boys.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite the prevalence of special interests (SIs) in autistic youth, research on SIs and how they are characterized is limited. Indeed, a significant challenge in identifying and classifying SIs lies in capturing the vast and diverse scope of potential interests in this population. The recently developed Special Interest Survey (SIS) is a caregiver-report measure to improve SI characterization by capturing a broad range of past and current SIs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtreme body mass index (BMI) values (i.e., above the 97th and below the 3rd percentiles) are inaccurately represented on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's growth curves, which may limit the utility of BMI percentile and BMI z-score for capturing changes in clinical outcomes for patients at extreme weights.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Despite the initial characterization of night eating syndrome (NES) in 1955, the definition and operationalization of its symptoms has varied considerably. To standardize the definition of NES and its symptoms, Allison et al. developed research diagnostic criteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examined differences in observed mealtime behaviors between children preparing to transition to oral feeding and children with various other chronic illnesses using a standardized measure of mealtime beaviors. The parent-child mealtime relationship can become strained due to problematic mealtime behaviors that limit food intake, as well as inadvertent reinforcement of disruptive behavior by caregivers. Frequency/rate of behaviors were compared between children with tube feeding (CwTF) and from previous studies of children with chronic illnesses using the Dyadic Interactive Nomenclature for Eating (DINE).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose And Objectives: Walking school bus programs increase children's physical activity through active travel to school; however, research to inform large-scale implementation of such programs is limited. We investigated contextual factors, implementation outcomes, and student outcomes in existing walking school bus programs in the United States and internationally.
Intervention Approach: Walking school bus programs involve a group of children walking to school together with an adult leader.
Objectives: To determine the standardised body mass index (BMIz) trajectory before and after adenotonsillectomy/tonsillectomy between children in different weight classifications in a larger sample than has been studied previously, and to identify which patient factors would explain the difference in these outcomes.
Design: We used a retrospective chart review and leveraged data of weight status pre- and post-adenotonsillectomy/tonsillectomy from a cohort of paediatric patients seen between May 2004 and April 2017.
Setting: Data were collected from an electronic medical record at a single Midwest paediatric health system.
To assess the effects of social media consumption on body dissatisfaction and negative affect using ecological momentary assessment, a method of assessment over time in the participants' naturalistic environment. Woman college students ( = 30) from a large public university participated in the study in Fall 2015. Participants were contacted via their smartphones five times per day for five days and asked to complete a battery of measures which assessed social media use, body dissatisfaction, and negative affect.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFShort-term outcomes associated with participation in REbeL, a peer-led dissonance-based eating disorder prevention program for high school students, were evaluated. Seventy-one students across the three high schools were enrolled in the study (REbeL N = 48; Control N = 23) and were assessed on measures of eating attitudes and behaviors, body image, weight bias, self-esteem, empowerment, and mood at the beginning of the school year; 37 REbeL students and 20 control students completed assessments at the end of the school year. Mixed effects GLM compared groups on outcomes at the end of the academic year.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrim Care Companion CNS Disord
October 2016
Objective: Bright light therapy is a noninvasive biological intervention for disorders with nonnormative circadian features. Eating disorders, particularly those with binge-eating and night-eating features, have documented nonnormative circadian eating and mood patterns, suggesting that bright light therapy may be an efficacious stand-alone or adjunctive intervention. The purpose of this systematic literature review, using PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines, was (1) to evaluate the state of the empirical treatment outcome literature on bright light therapy for eating disorders and (2) to explore the timing of eating behavior, mood, and sleep-related symptom change so as to understand potential mechanisms of bright light therapy action in the context of eating disorder treatment.
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