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Challenges to verbal encoding may affect the ability of autistic individuals to express their ideas. Therefore, visuospatial expression may represent a person's knowledge and skills more accurately than spoken language. To test this hypothesis, we asked seven autistic adults to linguistically retell and visuospatially reenact several animated clips. On average, visuospatial responses contained more correct elements than spoken responses. The level of intention of the three stimulus categories did not systematically affect response accuracy. Participants who produced visuospatial responses before spoken responses and those who had watched a greater number of stimuli assigned higher intentionality to shapes in the animations that were designed to elicit mentalizing. The modality used for expression may affect accuracy of responses by autistic individuals.

The Amy Morris Homans Cotillion and Pre-Cotillion created unique and liberatory spaces for many lesbian and allied women attending the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) convention between 1982 and 2014. In this article, we draw on feminist and queer theories to consider the multiple meanings embedded in Cotillion goers' lived experiences. Memories of planning and participating in these events linger for attendees decades later. The impact of attending ranged from lighthearted appreciation to profound gratitude. The Cotillion events disrupted the oppressive status quo at the AAHPERD convention and within kinesiology in favor of community building, joy, and the celebration of lesbian identities. We explore the disruption of heteropatriarchal norms and the creation of alternative community spaces to learn better from the past and to help create liberatory futures for practitioners and scholars in kinesiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of the Amy Morris Homans Cotillion is little known outside the circles of those who founded and attended the event. In this article, we detail the origins of the Cotillion from its inception in 1982 to its final iteration in 2014. This underground social event provided a safe space for women to connect and create a lesbian community of joyful sisterhood with long-lasting professional and personal relationships. At its peak, the Cotillion gathered hundreds of women, inviting them to drink, dance, and dream of a better world. We place the Cotillion in the context of the historical development of women's physical education and the field of kinesiology and use oral-history interviews with women who founded, organized, and regularly attended the Cotillion to create a narrative of the origins of this event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Amy Morris Homans Cotillion, held annually from 1982 to 2014, was a safe space for lesbian professionals in kinesiology, as well as a challenge and a disruption to the misogyny, homophobia, and heterosexism that pervaded the field in the mid- and late 20th century. In this article, we highlight the lived experiences of the broader Cotillion community. We conducted oral-history interviews with American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAPHERD) convention attendees about their memories of the Cotillion and Pre-Cotillion. Through these stories, we convey the significance of these events for the women and lesbians in kinesiology/physical education departments who attended them. The article begins with descriptions of interviewees' lives within the field, progresses to how attendees discovered and experienced the Cotillion and/or Pre-Cotillion, and then explores the impact of the Cotillion, both at AAPHERD and beyond the convention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from the Autism Inpatient Collection was used to examine the relationship between problem behaviors and verbal ability, which have generally, though not universally, been highly associated. In a comparison of 169 minimally-verbal and 177 fluently-verbal 4 to 20-year-old psychiatric inpatients with ASD, the severity of self-injurious behavior, stereotyped behavior, and irritability (including aggression and tantrums) did not significantly differ, when controlling for age and NVIQ. Verbal ability was not strongly related to the severity of problem behaviors. However, lower adapting/coping scores were significantly associated with increasing severity of each type of problem behavior, even when accounting for verbal ability. Interventions to develop adapting/coping mechanisms may be important for mitigation of problem behaviors across the spectrum of individuals with ASD.

More than 20?years ago, Minshew and colleagues proposed the Complex Information Processing model of autism in which the impairment is characterized as a generalized deficit involving multiple modalities and cognitive domains that depend on distributed cortical systems responsible for higher order abilities. Subsequent behavioral work revealed a related dissociation between concept formation and concept identification in autism suggesting the lack of an underlying organizational structure to manage increases in processing loads. The results of a recent study supported the impact of this relative weakness in conceptual reasoning on adaptive functioning in children and adults with autism. In this study, we provide further evidence of the difficulty relatively able older adolescents and adults with autism have with conceptual reasoning and provide evidence that this characterizes their difference from age- and ability-matched controls with typical development better than their differences in language. For verbal adults with autism, language may serve as a bootstrap or compensatory mechanism for learning but cannot overcome an inherent weakness in concept formation that makes information processing challenging as task demands increase.

Abstract thinking is generally highly correlated with problem-solving ability which is predictive of better adaptive functioning. Measures of conceptual reasoning, an ecologically-valid laboratory measure of problem-solving, and a report measure of adaptive functioning in the natural environment, were administered to children and adults with and without autism. The individuals with autism had weaker conceptual reasoning ability than individuals with typical development of similar age and cognitive ability. For the autism group, their flexible thinking scores were significantly correlated with laboratory measures of strategy formation and rule shifting and with reported overall adaptive behavior but not socialization scores. Therefore, in autism, flexibility of thought is potentially more important for adaptive functioning in the natural environment than conceptual reasoning or problem-solving.

Few direct comparisons have been made between the responsiveness of children with autism to computer-generated or animated characters and their responsiveness to humans. Twelve 4-to 8-year-old children with autism interacted with a human therapist; a human-controlled, interactive avatar in a theme park; a human actor speaking like the avatar; and cartoon characters who sought social responses. We found superior gestural and verbal responses to the therapist; intermediate response levels to the avatar and the actor; and poorest responses to the cartoon characters, although attention was equivalent across conditions. These results suggest that even avatars that provide live, responsive interactions are not superior to human therapists in eliciting verbal and non-verbal communication from children with autism in this age range.

This study used the modality shift experiment, a relatively simple reaction time measure to visual and auditory stimuli, to examine attentional shifting within and across modalities in 33 children and 42 adults with high-functioning autism as compared to matched numbers of age- and ability-matched typical controls. An exaggerated "modality shift effect" relative to the TD children occurred for the children with autism in conditions involving the reaction time when shifting from sound to light but not from light to sound. No exaggerated MSE was found for the adults with autism; rather, their responses were characterized by a generalized slowness relative to the adults with TD. These results suggest a lag in maturational development in autism in basic information processing mechanisms.

Personal pronouns, such as "I" and "you", require a speaker/listener to continuously re-map their reciprocal relation to their referent, depending on who is saying the pronoun. This process, called "deictic shifting", may underlie the incorrect production of these pronouns, or "pronoun reversals", such as referring to oneself with the pronoun "you", which has been reported in children with autism. The underlying neural basis of deictic shifting, however, is not understood, nor has the processing of pronouns been studied in adults with autism. The present study compared the brain activation pattern and functional connectivity (synchronization of activation across brain areas) of adults with high-functioning autism and control participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging in a linguistic perspective-taking task that required deictic shifting. The results revealed significantly diminished frontal (right anterior insula) to posterior (precuneus) functional connectivity during deictic shifting in the autism group, as well as reliably slower and less accurate behavioural responses. A comparison of two types of deictic shifting revealed that the functional connectivity between the right anterior insula and precuneus was lower in autism while answering a question that contained the pronoun "you", querying something about the participant's view, but not when answering a query about someone else's view. In addition to the functional connectivity between the right anterior insula and precuneus being lower in autism, activation in each region was atypical, suggesting over reliance on individual regions as a potential compensation for the lower level of collaborative interregional processing. These findings indicate that deictic shifting constitutes a challenge for adults with high-functioning autism, particularly when reference to one's self is involved, and that the functional collaboration of two critical nodes, right anterior insula and precuneus, may play a critical role for deictic shifting by supporting an attention shift between oneself and others.

Adaptive behavior in autism is highly variable and strongly related to prognosis. This study explored family history as a potential source of variability in adaptive behavior in autism. Participants included 77 individuals (mean age = 18) with average or better intellectual ability and autism. Parents completed the Family History Interview about the presence of broader autism phenotype symptoms and major psychiatric disorders in first degree relatives. Adaptive behavior was assessed via the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS). Based on family history variables, age, and intelligence quotient (IQ), 87% of participants were correctly classified as having impaired or average VABS scores. Family history of depression and shyness accounted for the most variance in VABS scores, and they had the greatest influence on VABS Socialization scores in particular. Possible underlying mechanisms include genetics, psychosocial factors, and social resources. This study provides initial evidence of the importance of family history to adaptive behavior in autism and has implications for genetics and treatment.

Investigation of the brain and brain function in living children and adults with autism has led to new information on the neurobiology of autism. Autism is characterized by early brain overgrowth and alterations in gray and white matter. Functional imaging studies suggest that individuals with autism have reduced synchronization between key brain regions for different cognitive tasks. Processing connections within brain regions may be too strong. Understanding of these findings can lead to the design of interventions that accommodate the way the brains of children with autism function and may lead to the promotion of more flexible thinking and learning.

Previously researchers have noted a high level of occurrence of the IQ profile associated with nonverbal learning disability (NLD) in Asperger syndrome (ASP) but not in high functioning autism (HFA). We examined the IQ profile scores of a large sample of children (n=69) and adults (n=77) with HFA, stringently diagnosed according to ADOS, ADI-R, and DSM-IV criteria, and a corresponding sample of typical child (n=72) and adult controls (n=107). At least one of the three primary components of the Wechsler pattern seen in NLD were found in 17-26% of the children and 20-32% of the adults with HFA. All three components occurred in slightly more than 5% of the children and adults with autism. Overall, the VIQ greater than PIQ profile seen in NLD occurred in 18% of the sample of individuals stringently diagnosed with HFA. Therefore, obtaining this IQ profile is not a valid clinical discriminator between NLD and HFA.

The intersection of Theory of Mind (ToM) processing and complex narrative comprehension in high functioning autism was examined by comparing cortical activation during the reading of passages that required inferences based on either intentions, emotional states, or physical causality. Right hemisphere activation was substantially greater for all sentences in the autism group than in a matched control group suggesting decreased LH capacity in autism resulting in a "spillover of processing" to RH homologs. Moreover, the ToM network was disrupted. The autism group showed similar activation for all inference types in the right temporo-parietal component of the ToM network whereas the control participants selectively activated this network only when appropriate. The autism group had lower functional connectivity within the ToM network and also between the ToM and a left hemisphere language network. Furthermore, the within-network functional connectivity in autism was correlated with the size of the anterior portion of the corpus callosum.

Verbal and spatial working memory were examined in high-functioning children, adolescents, and adults with autism compared to age and cognitive-matched controls. No deficit was found in verbal working memory in the individuals with autism using an "N"-back letter task and standardized measures. The distinction between the "N"-back task and others used previously to infer a working memory deficit in autism is that this task does not involve a complex cognitive demand. Deficits were found in spatial working memory. Understanding the basis for the dissociation between intact verbal working memory and impaired spatial working memory and the breakdown that occurs in verbal working memory as information processing demands are increased will likely provide valuable insights into the neural basis of autism.

Studies investigating inferential reasoning in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have focused on the ability to make socially-related inferences or inferences more generally. Important variables for intervention planning such as whether inferences depend on physical experiences or the nature of social information have received less consideration. A measure of bridging inferences of physical causation, mental states, and emotional states was administered to older children, adolescents, and adults with and without ASD. The ASD group had more difficulty making inferences, particularly related to emotional understanding. Results suggest that individuals with ASD may not have the stored experiential knowledge that specific inferences depend upon or have difficulties accessing relevant experiences due to linguistic limitations. Further research is needed to tease these elements apart., Author(s): Kimberly E. Bodner[sup.1] [sup.6] , Christopher R. Engelhardt[sup.2] [sup.3] , Nancy J. Minshew[sup.4] [sup.6] [sup.7] , Diane L. Williams[sup.5] [sup.6] Author Affiliations: (1) Department of Psychological Sciences, University of [...]

The article discusses the Amy Morris Homans Cotillion, an underground social gathering for lesbian professionals that took place during the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance Convention. The authors, Maria J. Veri and Diane L. Williams, were inspired to write about the Cotillion after attending a panel presentation on the event. They conducted interviews with Cotillion attendees and AAHPERD members to gather information for their narrative. The authors emphasize the importance of telling the stories of marginalized communities in the field of kinesiology and advocating for a more equitable and inclusive future. [Extracted from the article]