Marcus L. Thomeer

RCT of a Manualized Social Treatment for High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders.

This RCT examined the efficacy of a manualized social intervention for children with HFASDs. Participants were randomly assigned to treatment or wait-list conditions. Treatment included instruction and therapeutic activities targeting social skills, face-emotion recognition, interest expansion, and interpretation of non-literal language. A response-cost program was applied to reduce problem behaviors and foster skills acquisition. Significant treatment effects were found for five of seven primary outcome measures (parent ratings and direct child measures). Secondary measures based on staff ratings (treatment group only) corroborated gains reported by parents. High levels of parent, child and staff satisfaction were reported, along with high levels of treatment fidelity. Standardized effect size estimates were primarily in the medium and large ranges and favored the treatment group.

BASC-2 PRS profiles for students with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders.

BASC-2 PRS profiles of 62 children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASDs) were compared with those of 62 typically-developing children matched by age, gender, and ethnicity. Results indicated that, except for the Somatization, Conduct Problems, and Aggression scales, significant differences were found between the HFASD and typically-developing groups on all PRS scores. Mean HFASD scores were in the clinically significant range on the Behavioral Symptoms Index, Atypicality, Withdrawal, and Developmental Social Disorders scales. At-risk range HFASD means were obtained on the Adaptive Skills composite, all adaptive scales, remaining content scales (except Bullying), and Hyperactivity, Attention Problems, and Depression clinical scales. Screening indices suggested that the Developmental Social Disorders scale was highly effective in differentiating between the two groups.

Effectiveness of a Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment on the Social Behaviors of Children With Asperger Disorder

The current study presents preliminary data from an ongoing research project evaluating a summer treatment program for children with Asperger disorder (AD). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a cognitive—behavioral treatment program on the social behaviors of 6- to 13-year-old children with AD. Overall program effectiveness was the focus of analyses at this time, but two treatment configurations were also tentatively compared: social skills instruction only (SS) versus social skills instruction and behavioral treatment (SS+BT). Results of the study indicated significant improvement in social skills for the overall program based on parent and staff reports. In addition, parents reported a significant improvement in adaptability and reduction in unusual behavior for their children. In contrast, staff reports reflected no significant change in adaptability and an increase in unusual behaviors. Comparison of the two treatment configurations indicated no significant difference between SS and SS+BT. Implications for treatment and future research are provided.

Anxiety and Depression in Children with HFASDs: Symptom Levels and Source Differences

The purpose of this study was to: (1) examine symptom levels of anxiety and depression in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASDs) compared with matched control children using child self-reports and parent ratings; and (2) examine source differences within the two condition groups. An overall multivariate effect indicated significantly elevated depression and anxiety symptoms for children with HFASDs based on parent reports; however no significant between-group differences based on child self-reports. Within-condition source comparisons (parent vs. child) revealed a significant multivariate effect indicating a significant difference in symptoms of depression and anxiety for the HFASD group but none for the control. Correlations between parent and child reports for the HFASD group suggested some positive association between child-reports and parent-reports for depressive symptoms only; however, the difference in average scores reflected a substantial discrepancy in the magnitude of symptoms by rater. Implications for clinical assessment and future research are provided.

Health-Related Quality of Life of Parents of Children With High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders

The physical and mental health-related quality of life (QOL) of 89 parents of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASDs) was compared to the health-related QOL of 46 parents of children without disabilities. Parents completed a packet of surveys measuring demographics, parenting stress, coping, resources, and QOL. Results of t tests showed significant differences between the two groups for all variables. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that for parents of children with HFASDs, demographics and psychosocial variables accounted for a significant amount of variance for physical health-related QOL, with income, number of children, and stress being significant variables. Demographics and psychosocial variables also accounted for a significant amount of variance for parents’ mental health-related QOL, with income and stress being significant variables.

Effect of Social Familiarity on Salivary Cortisol and Self-Reports of Social Anxiety and Stress in Children with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders

This study examined the effect of social familiarity on salivary cortisol and social anxiety/stress for a sample of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders. The relationship between self-reported social anxiety/stress and salivary cortisol was also examined. Participants interacted with a familiar peer on one occasion and an unfamiliar peer on another occasion. Data were collected using salivary cortisol and a scale measuring subjective stress. Results indicated a significant condition by order interaction for salivary cortisol levels, while self-rated stress did not differ significantly across situations. A mild-moderate correlation was found between self-reported distress and salivary cortisol within each condition. Examination of self-rated distress vs. cortisol scatter plots suggested a more complex relationship than the correlation coefficient could adequately convey.

Atypical Categorization in Children with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder process many perceptual and social events differently from typically developing children, suggesting that they may also form and recognize categories differently. We used a dot pattern categorization task and prototype comparison modeling to compare categorical processing in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder and matched typical controls. We were interested in whether there were differences in how children with autism use average similarity information about a category to make decisions. During testing, the group with autism spectrum disorder endorsed prototypes less and was seemingly less sensitive to differences between to-be-categorized items and the prototype. The findings suggest that individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder are less likely to use overall average similarity when forming categories or making categorical decisions. Such differences in category formation and use may negatively impact processing of socially relevant information, such as facial expressions. A supplemental appendix for this article may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Facial encoding of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders

Facial encoding of a sample of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) was compared to facial encoding of matched typically developing children. Each participant was photographed after being prompted to enact a facial expression for six basic emotions. Raters evaluated (a) the extent to which the photo reflected the emotion, (b) the emotion in the photograph, and (c) the degree to which the photo appeared odd. Children with HFASD were significantly less adept at encoding sadness, and their expressions were significantly odder than those of their typical peers. Nonsignificant trends for children with HFASD suggested somewhat greater difficulty encoding anger and fear, as well as somewhat greater skill in encoding surprise and disgust, which was unanticipated.

Learning, plasticity, and atypical generalization in children with autism

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show accelerated learning in some tasks, degraded learning in others, and distinct deficits when generalizing to novel situations. Recent simulations with connectionist models suggest that deficits in cortical plasticity mechanisms can account for atypical patterns of generalization shown by some children with ASD. We tested the surprising theoretical prediction, from past simulations, that the children with ASD who show atypical generalization in perceptual categorization tasks will benefit more from training with a single prototypical member of the category than from training with multiple examples, but children with ASD who generalize normally will be comparatively harmed. The experimental results confirmed this prediction, suggesting that plasticity deficits may well underlie the difficulties that some children with ASD have generalizing skills, and these deficits are not specific to the acquisition of social skills, but rather reflect a more general perceptual learning deficit that may impact many abilities.

Comparison of the Bender Gestalt-II and VMI-V in Samples of Typical Children and Children with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders

The visual-motor skills of 60 children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASDs) and 46 typically developing children were assessed using the Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test— Second Edition (BG-II) and Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration, Fifth Edition (VMI-V). Within-group comparisons yielded substantive mean differences between the BG-II Copy score and VMI-V composite,Visual Perception and Motor Coordination sections of the VMI-V, and Copy and Recall sections of the BG-II, in both samples. Between-groups differences were assessed in a subsample of 27 participants from each group matched on age, gender, ethnicity, and parent education. After statistically controlling for IQ, the HFASD group scored significantly lower than the typically developing group on the two scores from each test with greater motor involvement. Intratest and intertest correlations were similar across the two samples. Correlations between the BG-II Copy score and VMI-V composite were .55 for the HFASD and .48 for the typically developing sample.