OBJECTIVETo investigate the characteristics of attention in school-age children with mild autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and to provide a basis for clinical treatment.

METHODSA total of 20 school-age children with mild ASD were enrolled, and the intermediate visual and auditory continuous performance test (IVA-CPT) was used to assess their attention. A total of 20 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 40 healthy children were enrolled as controls.

RESULTSCompared with the normal control group, the ASD group showed significantly lower scores of full scale attention quotient, full scale response control quotient, visual/auditory full scale response control quotient, visual/auditory prudence quotient, auditory perseverance quotient, visual consistency quotient, visual/auditory vigilance quotient, visual attention quotient, visual speed quotient, number of correct visual/auditory reactions, and visual mean reaction time of the second and third phases (P<0.05). Compared with the ADHD group, the ASD group showed significantly higher scores of full scale response control quotient and auditory consistency quotient (P<0.05), as well as significantly lower scores of visual vigilance quotient and visual speed quotient (P<0.05).

CONCLUSIONSSchool-age children with mild ASD have attention deficit mainly manifested as the defect in the ability to focus attention, which is similar to the defect in children with ADHD, but ASD children have a lower degree of attention control impairment compared with children with ADHD. The defect in the ability to focus visual attention is more severe than that in the ability to focus auditory attention, while there is no significant difference between the defects in visual and auditory attention control.

Adolescent ; Attention ; Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity ; psychology ; Autism Spectrum Disorder ; psychology ; Child ; Female ; Humans ; Male

OBJECTIVETo investigate the features of intelligence development, facial expression recognition ability, and the association between them in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

METHODSA total of 27 ASD children aged 6-16 years (ASD group, full intelligence quotient >70) and age- and gender-matched normally developed children (control group) were enrolled. Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Fourth Edition and Chinese Static Facial Expression Photos were used for intelligence evaluation and facial expression recognition test.

RESULTSCompared with the control group, the ASD group had significantly lower scores of full intelligence quotient, verbal comprehension index, perceptual reasoning index (PRI), processing speed index（PSI), and working memory index (WMI) (P<0.05). The ASD group also had a significantly lower overall accuracy rate of facial expression recognition and significantly lower accuracy rates of the recognition of happy, angry, sad, and frightened expressions than the control group (P<0.05). In the ASD group, the overall accuracy rate of facial expression recognition and the accuracy rates of the recognition of happy and frightened expressions were positively correlated with PRI (r=0.415, 0.455, and 0.393 respectively; P<0.05). The accuracy rate of the recognition of angry expression was positively correlated with WMI (r=0.397; P<0.05).

CONCLUSIONSASD children have delayed intelligence development compared with normally developed children and impaired expression recognition ability. Perceptual reasoning and working memory abilities are positively correlated with expression recognition ability, which suggests that insufficient perceptual reasoning and working memory abilities may be important factors affecting facial expression recognition ability in ASD children.

Adolescent ; Autism Spectrum Disorder ; psychology ; Child ; Child Development ; Facial Expression ; Female ; Humans ; Intelligence ; Male

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the efficacy and required indicators of Children Neuropsychological and Behavioral Scale-Revision 2016 (CNBS-R2016) in the differential diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and global developmental delay (GDD). METHODS: A total of 277 children with ASD and 415 children with GDD, aged 18-48 months, were enrolled as subjects. CNBS-R2016 was used to assess the developmental levels of six domains, i.e., gross motor, fine motor, adaptive ability, language, social behavior, and warning behavior, and a total of 13 indicators on intelligence age and developmental quotient (DQ) were obtained as the input features. Five commonly used machine learning classifiers were used for training to calculate the classification accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of each classifier. RESULTS: DQ of warning behavior was selected as the first feature in all five classifiers, and the use of this indicator alone had a classification accuracy of 78.90%. When the DQ of warning behavior was used in combination with the intelligence age of warning behavior, gross motor, and language, it had the highest classification accuracy of 86.71%. CONCLUSIONS Machine learning combined with CNBS-R2016 can effectively distinguish children with ASD from those with GDD. The DQ of warning behavior plays an important role in machine learning, and its combination with other features can improve classification accuracy, providing a basis for the efficient and accurate differential diagnosis of ASD and GDD in clinical practice.
Child ; Humans ; Autism Spectrum Disorder/psychology* ; Diagnosis, Differential ; Machine Learning ; Social Behavior

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to investigate the differences in the facial emotion recognition and discrimination ability between children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). METHODS: Fifty-three children aged 7 to 11 years participated in this study. Among them, 43 were diagnosed with ADHD and 10 with ASD. The parents of the participants completed the Korean version of the Child Behavior Checklist, ADHD Rating Scale and Conner's scale. The participants completed the Korean Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-fourth edition and Advanced Test of Attention (ATA), Penn Emotion Recognition Task and Penn Emotion Discrimination Task. The group differences in the facial emotion recognition and discrimination ability were analyzed by using analysis of covariance for the purpose of controlling the visual omission error index of ATA. RESULTS: The children with ADHD showed better recognition of happy and sad faces and less false positive neutral responses than those with ASD. Also, the children with ADHD recognized emotions better than those with ASD on female faces and in extreme facial expressions, but not on male faces or in mild facial expressions. We found no differences in the facial emotion discrimination between the children with ADHD and ASD. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that children with ADHD recognize facial emotions better than children with ASD, but they still have deficits. Interventions which consider their different emotion recognition and discrimination abilities are needed.
Autism Spectrum Disorder ; Autistic Disorder* ; Checklist ; Child Behavior ; Child* ; Discrimination (Psychology)* ; Facial Expression ; Female ; Humans ; Intelligence ; Male ; Parents

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a group of developmental dysfuntion of nervous system characterized by social interaction and communication disorders, restricted interests and repetitive stereotyped behaviors. The incidence of ASD has been increasing through the world. Some studies have shown that early reasonable individualized comprehensive intervention can obviously improve the prognosis of children with ASD. The etiology of ASD is unclear now, and behavioral and developmental intervention is the main therapy for ASD. The reasonable application of some drugs can improve the efficacy of the behavioral intervention for concomitant symptoms in ASD. With the in-depth study of the pathogenesis of ASD, bumetanide, oxytocin, vitamin D and hyperbaric oxygen therapy have been found to be promising for the improvement of core symptoms of ASD. This article reviews the research advances in the behavioral and developmental intervention and drug therapy for ASD.
Autism Spectrum Disorder ; etiology ; psychology ; therapy ; Behavior Therapy ; Child ; Humans ; Hyperbaric Oxygenation ; Interpersonal Relations ; Vitamin D ; therapeutic use

OBJECTIVETo investigate the characteristics of working memory ability on emotional faces and related event-related potential (ERP) in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

METHODSThe Chinese Facial Affective Picture System was used as test material, and the event-related potential system was used to record the electroencephalographic data when 16 ASD children aged 6-12 years (ASD group) and 14 normal children matched for age (control group) were completing the facial emotion delayed match-to-sample task. The characteristics of P3b component were analyzed for both groups.

RESULTSCompared with the control group, the ASD group had a significantly longer reaction time (1 527 ms vs 1 060 ms; P<0.05) and a significantly lower accuracy rate (76% vs 88%; P<0.01) in the facial emotion delayed match-to-sample task. There was a difference in the amplitude of P3b component during the encoding stage between the two groups. In the ASD group, the P3b component on the left side electrode had a higher amplitude than that on the right side electrode (P<0.05), while the control group had no such characteristics.

CONCLUSIONSThere is a difference in P3b component during the encoding stage between school-aged ASD children and normal children. In ASD children, working memory on emotional faces may depend more on the related neural pathway in the left hemisphere.

Autism Spectrum Disorder ; physiopathology ; psychology ; Child ; Emotions ; Evoked Potentials ; Facial Expression ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Memory, Short-Term

PURPOSE: High-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) involves pragmatic impairment of language skills. Among numerous tasks for assessing pragmatic linguistic skills, idioms are important to evaluating high-functioning ASD. Nevertheless, no assessment tool has been developed with specific consideration of Korean culture. Therefore, we designed the Korean Autism Social Language Task (KASLAT) to test idiom comprehension in ASD. The aim of the current study was to introduce this novel psychological tool and evaluate idiom comprehension deficits in high-functioning ASD. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The participants included 42 children, ages 6-11 years, who visited our child psychiatric clinic between April 2014 and May 2015. The ASD group comprised 16 children; the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) group consisted of 16 children. An additional 10 normal control children who had not been diagnosed with either disorder participated in this study. Idiom comprehension ability was assessed in these three groups using the KASLAT. RESULTS: Both ASD and ADHD groups had significantly lower scores on the matched and mismatched tasks, compared to the normal control children (matched tasks mean score: ASD 11.56, ADHD 11.56, normal control 14.30; mismatched tasks mean score: ASD 6.50, ADHD 4.31, normal control 11.30). However, no significant differences were found in scores of KASLAT between the ADHD and ASD groups. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that children with ASD exhibit greater impairment in idiom comprehension, compared to normal control children. The KASLAT may be useful in evaluating idiom comprehension ability.
Autism Spectrum Disorder/*diagnosis/psychology ; Child ; *Comprehension ; Female ; Humans ; Language ; Language Development Disorders/*diagnosis/psychology ; Language Disorders/*psychology ; Language Tests/*standards ; Male ; Reproducibility of Results

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by persistent deficits within two core symptom domains: social communication and restricted, repetitive behaviors. Although numerous studies have reported psychopharmacological treatment outcomes for the core symptom domains of ASD, there are not enough studies on fundamental treatments based on the etiological pathology of ASD. Studies on candidate medications related to the pathogenesis of ASD, such as naltrexone and secretin, were conducted, but the results were inconclusive. Oxytocin has been identified as having an important role in maternal behavior and attachment, and it has been recognized as a key factor in the social developmental deficit seen in ASD. Genetic studies have also identified associations between ASD and the oxytocin pathway. As ASD has its onset in infancy, parents are willing to try even experimental or unapproved treatments in an effort to avoid missing the critical period for diagnosis and treatment, which can place their child in an irreversible state. While therapeutic application of oxytocin for ASD is in its early stages, we have concluded that oxytocin would be a promising therapeutic substance via a thorough literature review focusing on the following: the relationship between oxytocin and sociality; single nucleotide polymorphisms as a biological marker of ASD; and validity verification of oxytocin treatment in humans. We also reviewed materials related to the mechanism of oxytocin action that may support its potential application in treating ASD.
Autistic Disorder* ; Child ; Autism Spectrum Disorder* ; Critical Period (Psychology) ; Diagnosis ; Humans ; Maternal Behavior ; Naltrexone ; Oxytocin* ; Parents ; Pathology ; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide ; Secretin ; Social Change ; Biomarkers

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated the effect of social skills training (SST) on facial emotion recognition and discrimination in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). METHODS: Twenty-three children aged 7 to 10 years participated in our SST. They included 15 children diagnosed with ADHD and 8 with ASD. The participants' parents completed the Korean version of the Child Behavior Checklist (K-CBCL), the ADHD Rating Scale, and Conner's Scale at baseline and post-treatment. The participants completed the Korean Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV (K-WISC-IV) and the Advanced Test of Attention at baseline and the Penn Emotion Recognition and Discrimination Task at baseline and post-treatment. RESULTS: No significant changes in facial emotion recognition and discrimination occurred in either group before and after SST. However, when controlling for the processing speed of K-WISC and the social subscale of K-CBCL, the ADHD group showed more improvement in total (p=0.049), female (p=0.039), sad (p=0.002), mild (p=0.015), female extreme (p=0.005), male mild (p=0.038), and Caucasian (p=0.004) facial expressions than did the ASD group. CONCLUSION: SST improved facial expression recognition for children with ADHD more effectively than it did for children with ASD, in whom additional training to help emotion recognition and discrimination is needed.
Autism Spectrum Disorder* ; Autistic Disorder* ; Checklist ; Child Behavior ; Child* ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Facial Expression ; Facial Recognition ; Female ; Humans ; Intelligence ; Male ; Parents ; Social Skills*

Sex is an important factor in understanding the clinical presentation, management, and developmental trajectory of children with neuropsychiatric disorders. While much is known about the clinical and neurobehavioral profiles of males with neuropsychiatric disorders, surprisingly little is known about females in this respect. Animal models may provide detailed mechanistic information about sex differences in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in terms of manifestation, disease progression, and development of therapeutic options. This review aims to widen our understanding of the role of sex in autism spectrum disorder, by summarizing and comparing behavioral characteristics of animal models. Our current understanding of how differences emerge in boys and girls with neuropsychiatric disorders is limited: Information derived from animal studies will stimulate future research on the role of biological maturation rates, sex hormones, sex-selective protective (or aggravating) factors and psychosocial factors, which are essential to devise sex precision medicine and to improve diagnostic accuracy. Moreover, there is a strong need of novel strategies to elucidate the major mechanisms leading to sex-specific autism features, as well as novel models or methods to examine these sex differences.
Animals ; Autism Spectrum Disorder* ; Autistic Disorder* ; Child ; Disease Progression ; Female ; Gonadal Steroid Hormones ; Humans ; Male ; Models, Animal ; Precision Medicine ; Psychology ; Rodentia* ; Sex Characteristics