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Though previous studies with autistic individuals have provided behavioral evidence of animacy perception difficulties, the spatio-temporal dynamics of animacy processing in autism remain underexplored. This study investigated how animacy is neurally encoded in autistic adults, and whether potential deficits in animacy processing have cascading deleterious effects on their social functioning skills. We employed a picture naming paradigm that recorded accuracy and response latencies to animate and inanimate pictures in young autistic adults and age- and IQ-matched healthy individuals, while also employing high-density EEG analysis to map the spatio-temporal dynamics of animacy processing. Participants' social skills were also assessed through a social comprehension task. The autistic adults exhibited lower accuracy than controls on the animate pictures of the task and also exhibited altered brain responses, including larger and smaller N100 amplitudes than controls on inanimate and animate stimuli, respectively. At late stages of processing, there were shorter slow negative wave latencies for the autistic group as compared to controls for the animate trials only. The autistic individuals' altered brain responses negatively correlated with their social difficulties. The results suggest deficits in brain responses to animacy in the autistic group, which were related to the individuals' social functioning skills.

Despite the fact that the urge to investigate bilingualism and neurodevelopmental disorders as continuous indices rather than categorical ones has been well-voiced among researchers with respect to research methodological approaches, in the recent literature, when it comes to examining language, cognitive skills and neurodivergent characteristics, it is still the case that the most prevalent view is the categorisation of adults or children into groups. In other words, there is a categorisation of individuals, e.g., monolingual vs. bilingual children or children with typical and atypical/non-typical/non-neurotypical development. We believe that this labelling is responsible for the conflicting results that we often come across in studies. The aim of this review is to bring to the surface the importance of individual differences through the study of relevant articles conducted in bilingual children and children with autism, who are ideal for this study. We concur with researchers who already do so, and we further suggest moving away from labels and instead shift towards the view that not everything is either white or black. We provide suggestions as to how this shift could be implemented in research, while mostly aiming at starting a discourse rather than offering a definite path.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is a multifaceted skill set which encompasses a variety of cognitive and neurobiological aspects. ToM deficits have long been regarded as one of the most disabling features in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. One of the theories that attempts to account for these impairments is that of "broken mirror neurons". The aim of this review is to present the most recent available studies with respect to the connection between the function of mirror neurons in individuals with ASD and ToM-reflecting sensorimotor, social and attentional stimuli. The majority of these studies approach the theory of broken mirror neurons critically. Only studies from the last 15 years have been taken into consideration. Findings from electroencephalography (EEG) studies so far indicate that further research is necessary to shed more light on the mechanisms underlying the connection(s) between ToM and neurophysiological operations.