Measuring Individual Differences in Cognitive, Affective, and Spontaneous Theory of Mind Among School-Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The present study examined individual differences in theory of mind (ToM) among a group of 60 children (7-11 years-old) with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and average intelligence. Using open-ended and structured tasks to measure affective ToM, cognitive ToM, and spontaneous social attribution, we explored the nature of ToM and assessed whether ToM predicts the phenotypic heterogeneity in ASD through structural equation modeling. Affective ToM uniquely predicted social symptom severity, whereas no ToM types predicted parent reported social functioning.

Predicting social and communicative ability in school-age children with autism spectrum disorder: A pilot study of the Social Attribution Task, Multiple Choice.

The Social Attribution Task, Multiple Choice is introduced as a measure of implicit social cognitive ability in children, addressing a key challenge in quantification of social cognitive function in autism spectrum disorder, whereby individuals can often be successful in explicit social scenarios, despite marked social adaptive deficits. The 19-question Social Attribution Task, Multiple Choice, which presents ambiguous stimuli meant to elicit social attribution, was administered to children with autism spectrum disorder (N = 23) and to age-matched and verbal IQ-matched typically developing children (N = 57). The Social Attribution Task, Multiple Choice performance differed between autism spectrum disorder and typically developing groups, with typically developing children performing significantly better than children with autism spectrum disorder.

Small molecule screening identifies regulators of the transcription factor ΔFosB.

ΔFosB protein accumulates in the striatum in response to chronic administration of drugs of abuse, L-DOPA, or stress, triggering long lasting neural and behavioral changes that underlie aspects of drug addiction, abnormal involuntary movements (dyskinesia), and depression. ΔFosB binds AP-1 DNA consensus sequences found in promoters of many genes and can both repress or activate gene transcription. In the striatum, ΔFosB is thought to dimerize with JunD to form a functional transcription factor, though strikingly JunD does not accumulate in parallel.