High-functioning Adolescents Research Articles

Reasoning on the Basis of Fantasy Content: Two Studies with High-Functioning Autistic Adolescents

Reasoning about problems with empirically false content can be hard, as the inferences that people draw are heavily influenced by their background knowledge. However, presenting empirically false premises in a fantasy context helps children and adolescents to disregard their beliefs, and to reason on the basis of the premises. The aim of the present experiments was to see if high-functioning adolescents with autism are able to utilize fantasy context to the same extent as typically developing adolescents when they reason about empirically false premises. The results indicate that problems with engaging in pretence in autism persist into adolescence, and this hinders the ability of autistic individuals to disregard their beliefs when empirical knowledge is irrelevant.

The neural underpinnings of prosody in autism

This study examines the processing of prosodic cues to linguistic structure and to affect, drawing on fMRI and behavioral data from 16 high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 11 typically developing controls. Stimuli were carefully matched on pitch, intensity, and duration, while varying systematically in conditions of affective prosody (angry versus neutral speech) and grammatical prosody (questions versus statement). To avoid conscious attention to prosody, which normalizes responses in young people with ASD, the implicit comprehension task directed attention to semantic aspects of the stimuli. Results showed that when perceiving prosodic cues, both affective and grammatical, activation of neural regions was more generalized in ASD than in typical development, and areas recruited reflect heightened reliance on cognitive control, reading of intentions, attentional management, and visualization. This broader recruitment of executive and “mind-reading” brain areas for a relative simple language-processing task may be interpreted to suggest that speakers with high-functioning autism (HFA) have developed less automaticity in language processing and may also suggest that “mind-reading” or theory of mind deficits are intricately bound up in language processing. Data provide support for both a right-lateralized as well as a bilateral model of prosodic processing in typical individuals, depending upon the function of the prosodic information.

Brief Report: The Assessment of Anxiety in High-Functioning Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Anxiety may exacerbate interpersonal difficulties and contribute to secondary behavioral problems in adolescents with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD). This study was conducted to assess the psychometric properties and construct validity of measures of anxiety with a sample (n = 30) of adolescents with HFASD and comorbid anxiety disorders. Results indicate that the measures (CASI-Anxiety Scale; Sukhodolsky et al. 2008; MASC; March 1998) possess acceptable internal consistency, and there is evidence of discriminant validity. Most of the adolescents, however, under-reported problems with anxiety, compared to parent-reported and clinician-derived reports and given they were seeking treatment for anxiety problems. Findings highlight the importance of using multiple raters in clinical practice and consideration of rater discrepancies in clinical research.

Evidence-Based Social Skills Training for Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders: The UCLA PEERS Program

The present study examines the efficacy and durability of the PEERS Program, a parent-assisted social skills group intervention for high-functioning adolescents with ASD. Results indicate that teens receiving PEERS significantly improved their social skills knowledge, social responsiveness, and overall social skills in the areas of social communication, social cognition, social awareness, social motivation, assertion, cooperation, and responsibility, while decreasing autistic mannerisms and increasing the frequency of peer interactions. Independent teacher ratings revealed significant improvement in social skills and assertion from pre-test to follow-up assessment. Examination of durability of improvement revealed maintenance of gains in nearly all domains with additional treatment gains at a 14-week follow-up assessment.

Investigating Multitasking in High-Functioning Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders Using the Virtual Errands Task

Using a modified version of the Virtual Errands Task (VET; McGeorge et al. in Presence-Teleop Virtual Environ 10(4):375-383, 2001), we investigated the executive ability of multitasking in 18 high-functioning adolescents with ASD and 18 typically developing adolescents. The VET requires multitasking (Law et al. in Acta Psychol 122(1):27-44, 2006) because there is a limited amount of time in which to complete the errands. ANCOVA revealed that the ASD group completed fewer tasks, broke more rules and rigidly followed the task list in the order of presentation. Our findings suggest that executive problems of planning inflexibility, inhibition, as well as difficulties with prospective memory (remembering to carry out intentions) may lie behind multitasking difficulties in ASD.

Emotion Perception in Music in High-Functioning Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) succeed at a range of musical tasks. The ability to recognize musical emotion as belonging to one of four categories (happy, sad, scared or peaceful) was assessed in high-functioning adolescents with ASD (N=26) and adolescents with typical development (TD, N=26) with comparable performance IQ, auditory working memory, and musical training and experience. When verbal IQ was controlled for, there was no significant effect of diagnostic group. Adolescents with ASD rated the intensity of the emotions similarly to adolescents with TD and reported greater confidence in their responses when they had correctly (vs. incorrectly) recognized the emotions. These findings are reviewed within the context of the amygdala theory of autism.

The influence of visual saliency on fixation patterns in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

It is widely reported that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) direct their attention in an atypical manner. When viewing complex scenes, typically developing individuals look at social aspects of scenes more rapidly than individuals with ASD. In the absence of a strong drive to extract social information, is something else capturing attention in these initial fixations, such as visually salient features? Twenty four high-functioning adolescents with ASD and 24 typically developing matched control participants viewed a series of indoor and outdoor scenes while their eye movements were tracked. Participants in both groups were more likely to fixate on salient regions in the first five fixations than later in viewing. Peak saliency at fixation occurred at fixation two for the typically developing participants but at fixation three for ASD participants. This difference was driven by typically developing participants looking at heads earlier than ASD participants – which are often visually salient. No differences between groups were observed for images in which the heads were not salient. We can therefore conclude that visual saliency impacts fixation location in a similar manner in individuals with ASD and those with typical development. It was found that social features in scenes (heads) captured attention much more than visually salient features, even in individuals with ASD.

Brief Report: How Adolescents with ASD Process Social Information in Complex Scenes. Combining Evidence from Eye Movements and Verbal Descriptions

We investigated attention, encoding and processing of social aspects of complex photographic scenes. Twenty-four high-functioning adolescents (aged 11-16) with ASD and 24 typically developing matched control participants viewed and then described a series of scenes, each containing a person. Analyses of eye movements and verbal descriptions provided converging evidence that both groups displayed general interest in the person in each scene but the salience of the person was reduced for the ASD participants. Nevertheless, the verbal descriptions revealed that participants with ASD frequently processed the observed person's emotion or mental state without prompting. They also often mentioned eye-gaze direction, and there was evidence from eye movements and verbal descriptions that gaze was followed accurately. The combination of evidence from eye movements and verbal descriptions provides a rich insight into the way stimuli are processed overall. The merits of using these methods within the same paradigm are discussed.

Cue Salience in Face Processing by High Functioning Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

This study examined the effect of competing auditorily and visually presented word cues on emotion recognition ability in high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Adolescents with ASD were compared to typical controls on computer-based tasks of emotion recognition. Participants were asked to make a determination about the emotion expressed by a face presented alone, with competing visually-presented word stimuli, and with competing auditorily-presented word stimuli. Individuals with autism were more proficient at recognizing emotions in faces when competing word cues were consistent with the emotion in the face than when they were inconsistent or irrelevant, and all participants were more accurate in emotion recognition when competing word cues were presented auditorily rather than visually, and when competing word cues were consistent as opposed to inconsistent or irrelevant. Contrary to hypothesized results, individuals with autism did as well as controls in making determinations about emotions in faces when competing word cues were inconsistent with the emotion in the faces. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Effectiveness of behavioral skills training on staff performance in a job training setting for high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorders

Few studies have focused on improving staff performance in naturalistic training settings for high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. Behavioral skills training, consisting of group instruction and supervisory feedback, was used to improve staff performance on (a) providing positive reinforcement, (b) providing error correction, and (c) initiating opportunities for students to show the target response (i.e. asking for help). Also changes in students’ target response and generalization of staff performance were evaluated. Data were collected in a multiple baseline design across three staff skills. There were improvements in all staff skills and changes in ‘error correction’ as a result of intervention were statistically significant. Improvements in staff skills were maintained over time. Effects of intervention on students’ target responses and generalization of staff performance, however, were limited. Staff evaluated the intervention as effective and acceptable. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

How impaired is mind-reading in high-functioning adolescents and adults with autism?

Difficulties in understanding the mental states of others are considered to be a core cognitive feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Traditional false-belief tasks were not suitable to measure mind-reading in adolescents and adults with ASD and were replaced by so-called more “advanced” tasks. A first series of tasks included the presentation of static stimuli in the visual or auditory modality. More recently, more dynamic, naturalistic tasks were developed. The most ecologically valid task to measure mind-reading is probably the empathic accuracy paradigm. Research with advanced mind-reading tests has demonstrated that high-functioning adults with ASD should not be underestimated since they may have good and in some cases very good mind-reading skills. Impairments are most obvious when an unstructured, dynamic and naturalistic task is being used.

The eye gaze direction of an observed person can bias perception, memory, and attention in adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder

The reported experiments aimed to investigate whether a person and his or her gaze direction presented in the context of a naturalistic scene cause perception, memory, and attention to be biased in typically developing adolescents and high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A novel computerized image manipulation program presented a series of photographic scenes, each containing a person. The program enabled participants to laterally maneuver the scenes behind a static window, the borders of which partially occluded the scenes. The gaze direction of the person in the scenes spontaneously cued attention of both groups in the direction of gaze, affecting judgments of preference (Experiment 1a) and causing memory biases (Experiment 1b). Experiment 2 showed that the gaze direction of a person cues visual search accurately to the exact location of gaze in both groups. These findings suggest that biases in preference, memory, and attention are caused by another person’s gaze direction when viewed in a complex scene in adolescents with and without ASD

Do Gaze Cues in Complex Scenes Capture and Direct the Attention of High Functioning Adolescents with ASD? Evidence from Eye-tracking

Visual fixation patterns whilst viewing complex photographic scenes containing one person were studied in 24 high-functioning adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and 24 matched typically developing adolescents. Over two different scene presentation durations both groups spent a large, strikingly similar proportion of their viewing time fixating the person's face. However, time-course analyses revealed differences between groups in priorities of attention to the region of the face containing the eyes. It was also noted that although individuals with ASD were rapidly cued by the gaze direction of the person in the scene, this was not followed by an immediate increase in total fixation duration at the location of gaze, which was the case for typically developing individuals.

Multi-informant reports of psychiatric symptoms among high-functioning adolescents with Asperger syndrome or autism

The aim of the study was to examine psychiatric symptoms in high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorders reported by multiple informants. Forty-three 11- to 17-year-old adolescents with Asperger syndrome (AS) or high-functioning autism (HFA) and 217 typically developed adolescents completed the Youth Self-Report (YSR), while their parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Teachers of adolescents with AS/HFA completed the Teacher Report Form (TRF). The informants reported significantly more psychiatric symptoms, especially withdrawn, anxious/depressed, social and attention problems, in adolescents with AS/HFA than in controls. In contrast to findings in the general population, the psychiatric problems of adolescents with AS/HFA are well acknowledged by multiple informants, including self-reports. However, anxiety and depressive symptoms were more commonly reported by adolescents with AS/HFA and their teachers than their parents, indicating that some emotional distress may be hidden from their parents.

The Effect of Music on Social Attribution in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders

High-functioning adolescents with ASD and matched controls were presented with animations that depicted varying levels of social interaction and were either accompanied by music or silent. Participants described the events of the animation, and we scored responses for intentionality, appropriateness, and length of description. Adolescents with ASD were less likely to make social attributions, especially for those animations with the most complex social interactions. When stimuli were accompanied by music, both groups were equally impaired in appropriateness and intentionality. We conclude that adolescents with ASD perceive and integrate musical soundtracks with visual displays equivalent to typically developing individuals.

Postsecondary Educational Aspirations of High-Functioning Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders and Their Parents

Individual interviews with 21 high-functioning adolescents diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and their parents were used to assess postsecondary educational aspirations and thoughts concerning obstacles and resources that shape educational achievement of this group. The results from these semistructured interviews revealed that both the adolescents and their parents have clear postsecondary educational goals but have significant concerns about the readiness of postsecondary institutions to meet the adolescents' needs. The special significance of social challenges and the ways that families frame educational aspirations are noted. Results from this analysis have direct application to both educational and family settings.

Different Verbal Learning Strategies in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test

The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, which requires the free recall of the same list of 15 unrelated words over 5 trials, was administered to 21 high-functioning adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 21 matched typical individuals. The groups showed similar overall levels of free recall, rates of learning over trials and subjective organisation of their recall. However, the primacy portion of the serial position curve of the ASD participants showed slower growth over trials than that of the typical participants. The implications of this finding for our understanding of memory in ASD are discussed.

A typical Development of Face-Related Activation in Autism

Event Abstract Back to Event A typical Development of Face-Related Activation in Autism Suzy Scherf1* 1 University of Pittsburgh, Department of Psychiatry, United States Impaired face processing is one of the most widely documented deficits in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Converging evidence also indicates that the neural circuitry recruited by adults with autism while they observe faces is atypical. However, little is known about the developmental profile of these atypical face-related regions. The goal of this project was to evaluate whether functional organization throughout the ventral visual pathway is atypical in individuals with ASD during adolescence, a critical time for the development of visuoperceptual organization skills that are essential for face and object processing and that fail to mature in adolescents with ASD. We used fMRI to map face-, object-, and place-related activation in high-functioning adolescents with autism and age- and IQ-matched controls. Although the ASD adolescents exhibited typical organization in object- and place-related cortex, as a group, they did not show consistent face-selective activation in classical face regions (FFA, OFA, STS). When a less stringent statistical threshold was adopted, some face-selectivity was uncovered. To understand this lack of a robust neural signature for faces in the ASD group, we evaluated individual subject variability in the magnitude of category selectivity, the size, and the location of face-related activation in individually defined fusiform, OFA, and STS regions. Importantly, the ASD and control groups were comparable in the magnitude of face-selectivity in the face regions. Also, 70% of the participants with autism, compared to 90% of the control participants, exhibited face-selective activation in the fusiform gyrus. However, only 30% of the participants with autism did so in the classic FFA region, compared to 60% of the control participants. The face-selective ROIs were also smaller in the autism than control group. These results indicate that face-selective activation is present in smaller volumes with considerable variability in the locus in individuals with ASD, and provide further support for the notion of adolescence as a potentially vulnerable period in visuoperceptual development. Conference: Conference on Neurocognitive Development, Berkeley, CA, United States, 12 Jul - 14 Jul, 2009. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Perception Citation: Scherf S (2009). A typical Development of Face-Related Activation in Autism. Conference Abstract: Conference on Neurocognitive Development. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.10.005 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 06 Jul 2009; Published Online: 06 Jul 2009. * Correspondence: Suzy Scherf, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Psychiatry, Pittsburgh, United States, sscherf@andrew.cmu.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Suzy Scherf Google Suzy Scherf Google Scholar Suzy Scherf PubMed Suzy Scherf Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Brain mechanisms for social perception: lessons from autism and typical development.

In this review, we summarize our research program, which has as its goal charting the typical and atypical development of the social brain in children, adolescents, and adults with and without autism. We highlight recent work using virtual reality stimuli, eye tracking, and functional magnetic resonance imaging that has implicated the superior temporal sulcus (STS) region as an important component of the network of brain regions that support various aspects of social cognition and social perception. Our work in typically developing adults has led to the conclusion that the STS region is involved in social perception via its role in the visual analysis of others' actions and intentions from biological-motion cues. Our work in high-functioning adolescents and adults with autism has implicated the STS region as a mechanism underlying social perception dysfunction in this neurodevelopmental disorder. We also report novel findings from a study of biological-motion perception in young children with and without autism.

Romantic Partner Selection and Socialization During Early Adolescence

This prospective study examined romantic partner selection and socialization among a sample of 78 young adolescents (6th-8th graders). Independent assessments of adolescent and romantic partner adjustment were collected before and after relationships initiated via peer nomination and self-report. Prior to their relationship, adolescents and partners were significantly alike on popularity, physical attraction, and depressive symptoms. Controlling for initial similarity, partners' popularity, depressive symptoms, relational aggression, and relational victimization significantly predicted changes in adolescents' functioning in these areas over time. However, the magnitude and direction of change varied according to adolescents' and partners' prerelationship functioning. In general, adolescents who dated high-functioning partners changed more than those who dated low-functioning partners, and partner characteristics predicted greater change among low- versus high-functioning adolescents. Results were consistent even when controlling for best friend characteristics. The current findings are among the first to demonstrate unique contributions of romantic partner characteristics to adolescents' psychosocial functioning.