Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) – Page 2

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is More Likely for Children With Benign Childhood Epilepsy

Benign childhood epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS) is a form of childhood epilepsy that most children outgrow during adolescence but which has been associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and other neuropsychological disorders. To better understand this association, Bektas and colleagues compared 58 BECTS children to 60 neurotypical children and found that not only were BECTS children more likely to develop ASD, the likelihood of developing ASD tended to increase the older a child was when epileptic seizures began.

High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) May Be Associated with Childhood Epilepsy

Matsuo and colleagues analyzed the association of epilepsy with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and made several important observations. First, of 519 patients with epilepsy, only 15.2% (79) also had ASD. Second, most ASD patients with epilepsy were high functioning, which may explain why ASD was not detected until later in a small number of cases. Third, while 85% of the patients experienced their first epileptic seizures before age 10, about two-thirds had been seizure free for at least two years. Fourth, on the other hand, most but not all of the patients continued to show symptoms of ASD after treatment of epilepsy. These results suggest that although epilepsy and ASD are frequently associated, it seems unlikely that epilepsy causes ASD.

Why Are Epileptic Seizures Common in Children with Autism?

Epilepsy and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) sometimes appear together. Why this co-occurrence should exist is not clear. To help find answers, Rossi and colleagues divided 106 patients with ASD into three groups based on whether the patients exhibited abnormal EEG patterns (paroxysmal abnormalities) and/or experienced epileptic seizures. Their results suggested that when ASD and epilepsy occur together, both are likely caused by genetic factors rather than injuries or lesions to the brain.

Does High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder Lead to More Difficulty Regulating Emotions?

High-functioning individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) sometimes get very upset and angry. Because other people get upset and angry too, one might wonder whether people with ASD are more likely than others to do so. If so, Samson and colleagues reasoned that people with high-functioning ASD may have more difficulty regulating their emotions. These researchers therefore compared 27 high-functioning ASD research participants with 27 matched neurotypical controls. They found that participants with high-functioning ASD experienced higher levels of negative emotions than the controls and were more likely to have difficulty regulating their emotions.

Do Autistic Individuals Have More Difficulty Remembering the Order of Non-Verbal Information?

Previous research had shown that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have more difficulty than others in remembering the order in which verbal information appeared such as, for example, the order in which one may pass through various cities on a road trip from Austin to Seattle. Bowler and colleagues wanted to see if this deficit in verbal serial recall would extend to non-verbal visual-spatial information, in this case the sequence of seven points which appeared on a map (a 3 x 4 grid) one point at a time. Participants had to recall the correct locations on the map in the exact order in which each point appeared.

These researchers found that, compared to neurotypical individuals, individuals with ASD had more difficulty remembering the order in which visual-spatial information appeared. Interestingly, their results also suggested that autistic individuals may use verbal strategies to remember non-verbal information.

How Does Autism Spectrum Disorder Affect a Person’s Memory?

If you know an individual with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), you may have noticed that they may be very good at remembering certain kinds of things such as calendar dates. There have been many studies examining how ASD may affect a person’s memory, but the results have been complex and difficult to explain. Poirier and colleagues decided to look more closely at how working memory (also known as “short-term memory”) may differ between ASD and neurotypical individuals. In three experiments, they had ASD and neurotypical individuals perform variations of a verbal serial recall task.

These researchers found that individuals with ASD could remember the verbal items just as well as neurotypical individuals but they had more trouble remembering the order in which the verbal information appeared.

Do Autistic Individuals Gesture Less than Neurotypical Individuals?

When people try to communicate with others, they may use different types of gestures to make their meaning clear. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have been thought to gesture less than others, but recent research suggests whether that is true depends on the type of gesture. Deictic gestures include actions such as pointing and reaching. Emblematic gestures communicate semantic meaning such as nodding the head to mean “yes” or shrugging the shoulders to mean “I don’t know.” Iconic gestures visually represent an object, action, or concept such as forming a circle with the hands to represent a ball, sliding a hand rapidly from left to right to indicate a car racing past, and so on.

Nicola McKern and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 31 articles comparing the gestures of over 700 ASD individuals to those of 860 neurotypical individuals. They found that autistic individuals do indeed exhibit fewer deictic and emblematic gestures than others, but that they do not generally differ from others in the production of iconic gestures.

These researchers believe the most important conclusion from their analysis is that we should not prematurely rule out a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder simply because a person gestures normally to communicate.