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This study examines the efficacy of the Japanese version of the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS), which focuses on improving social functioning through making friends and maintaining good relationships for adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without intellectual disabilities. Originally developed in the United States, PEERS is one of the few evidence-based social skills training programs for youth with ASD. The present study shows that with linguistic and cultural modifications, PEERS is effective in improving social functioning for adolescents with ASD in Japan. Positive results were found specifically in the areas of socialization, communication, knowledge of social skills, autistic mannerisms, and behavioral and emotional problems. In addition, most treatment gains were maintained at a 3-month follow-up assessment. These findings suggest that the Japanese version of PEERS is beneficial across multiple socio-emotional and behavioral domains for adolescents with ASD.

In everyday conversation, both children and adults have an expectation that the speaker is telling the truth. In reality, however, this expectation is not always fulfilled, and both children and adults are equipped with a capacity for epistemic vigilance, i.e. a capacity to assess the speaker's trustworthiness in order to avoid being misinformed. The hearer's assessment of the speaker's trustworthiness is based on two criteria: his ability to provide true information and his benevolence toward the hearer. In two studies, we investigated how young children use these criteria, by focusing on two indicators of trustworthiness: linguistic expressions of speaker certainty, and personal familiarity. In the first study, both 3- and 4-year-olds were successful in distinguishing the degree of speaker certainty expressed by linguistic indicators and using it to assess the trustworthiness of the speaker. In the second study, children's ability to assess the speaker's trustworthiness on the basis of his attitude of certainty was further scrutinized. When pitted against personal familiarity, children's bias toward the certain speaker was modified in 5-year-olds but not 3 year-olds. The difference between the two age groups suggests that epistemic vigilance consists of a set of distinct components, with different developmental timelines.

A spiral-type chiral Eu(iii) coordination polymer showed strong luminescence (emission quantum yield Φf-f = 57% and photosensitized energy transfer efficiency ηsens = 53%) and effective CD and CPL properties (gCPL = 0.17) when compared with a mono-nuclear chiral Eu(iii) complex in the solid state (Φf-f = 36%, ηsens = 14%, and gCPL = 0.09).

Some overlap has been suggested among the subtypes of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children. The Japanese version of the Children’s Communication Checklist-2 (CCC-2) is a useful measure for identifying profiles in relation to communication impairments in children with ASD. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the CCC-2 could identify subtypes in relation to communication impairments in Japanese children with ASD. The study participants were 113 children with ASD but without intellectual disabilities aged 3–12 years. Parents were given the Japanese version of the CCC-2 and asked to rate their children, who were then classified into two groups based on statistical analysis. Significant differences were found between clusters in mean CCC-2 subscales. These results suggest that one subtype was associated with low language competence and strong characteristics of autism, while the other was associated with relatively high language competence and milder characteristics of autism.

Recently, a series of studies demonstrated false belief understanding in young children through completely nonverbal measures. These studies have revealed that children younger than 3 years of age, who consistently fail the standard verbal false belief test, can anticipate others' actions based on their attributed false beliefs. The current study examined whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who are known to have difficulties in the verbal false belief test, may also show such action anticipation in a nonverbal false belief test. We presented video stimuli of an actor watching an object being hidden in a box. The object was then displaced while the actor was looking away. We recorded children's eye movements and coded whether they spontaneously anticipated the actor's subsequent behavior, which could only have been predicted if they had attributed a false belief to her. Although typically developing children correctly anticipated the action, children with ASD failed to show such action anticipation. The results suggest that children with ASD have an impairment in false belief attribution, which is independent of their verbal ability.

In verbal communication, the hearer takes advantage of the linguistic expressions of certainty and evidentiality to assess how committed the speaker might be to the truth of the informational content of the utterance. Little is known, however, about the precise developmental mechanism of this ability. In this chapter, we approach the question by elucidating factors that are likely to constrain young children's understanding of linguistically encoded certainty and evidentiality, including the types of linguistic form of these expressions, namely, grammaticalized or lexical forms.

As in other countries with large immigrant populations, in Japan there is increasing interest in students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who experience learning and behavioral difficulties in the classroom. The causes of the problems have not been identified owing to a lack of appropriate and comparable assessments. In this study we focused on Japanese-Brazilian elementary school students, the largest ethnic minority group of students in Japan, and explored whether evaluation of their learning and behavior is influenced by the following aspects: language proficiency, cognitive capacity and family environment. We conducted a set of tasks to assess the students’ vocabulary and syntactic development in Japanese and Portuguese, and to evaluate their executive functions as an indicator of nonverbal cognitive development. Questionnaires were administered to teachers and parents in order to gain information about the children’s classroom performance and family environment, such as parents’ educational background and place of birth. Three key findings from our data include the following. (1) Some students in mainstream classrooms were ‘at-risk’ in their level of cognitive capacity. (2) Even among those with typical cognitive capacity, academic performance and classroom behavior were still rated lower than at grade level for the native population. (3) Teachers’ ratings of the two aspects were associated with different factors: low academic performance was significantly influenced by poor working memory, while problematic behavior was affected by Japanese grammatical skill and father’s educational background. This study used quantitative data to confirm that clear information about students’ linguistic, cognitive and environmental profiles, could be used to ensure that appropriate support is provided to students experiencing difficulties.

The chemical constituents of the root extracts and the evolutionarily neutral DNA base sequences were studied for 28 samples of Ligularia duciformis, L. kongkalingensis, and L. nelumbifolia collected in Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces of China. The samples could be classified into four chemotypes (1-4). Sesquiterpenoids having eremophilane and oplopane skeletons were isolated from two (Chemotype 1) and three (Chemotype 2) samples, respectively. Two new oplopane derivatives were isolated and their structures were determined. In 18 samples, phenylpropenoids were the major components (Chemotype 3). In five samples, neither phenylpropenoids nor sesquiterpenoids were found (Chemotype 4). Despite this large chemical variety, no correlation was found between the chemotype and the morphological criteria of species identification. The analysis of the evolutionarily neutral DNA regions also indicated that the samples were not separated into distinct clades and that introgression was extensive.

It has been repeatedly shown that when asked to identify a protagonist's false belief on the basis of his false statement, English-speaking 3-year-olds dismiss the statement and fail to attribute to him a false belief. In the present studies, we tested 3-year-old Japanese children in a similar task, using false statements accompanied by grammaticalized particles of speaker (un)certainty, as in everyday Japanese utterances. The Japanese children were directly compared with same-aged German children, whose native language does not have grammaticalized epistemic concepts. Japanese children profited from the explicit statement of the protagonist's false belief when it was marked with the attitude of certainty in a way that German children did not - presumably because Japanese but not German children must process such marking routinely in their daily discourse. These results are discussed in the broader context of linguistic and theory of mind development.

Ever since Premack & Woodruff's classic article^1^, which introduced the term "theory of mind", researchers have claimed that strategic deception is the most natural behavioural consequence of understanding false belief. Here we challenge that claim, and provide evidence for the first time that the earliest manifestation of false belief understanding in human development is found in young children's emerging pro-social behaviours. In a modified false belief task, children were asked either to choose one protagonist they should help to find the object (the pro-social context), or to choose one they need to deceive so that none of the protagonists can find the object (the competitive context). The results show that the pro-social motive, but not the competitive motive, boosts early false belief understanding. This is most clearly contrasted with findings that apes, our closest living relatives, are capable of intentionally manipulating others by concealing information only under competitive motives, not under cooperative alternatives. Thus, the current findings are the strongest to date that sophisticated understanding of others' belief in humans has its unique origin, separate from the primate origin at some point in recent evolution, when cooperative and communicative motives played an essential role for their survival.

Approximately half of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individual suffer from comorbid intellectual disabilities (ID). Oxytocin (OXT) receptors are highly expressed in temporal lobe structures and are likely to play a modulatory role in excitatory/inhibitory balance, at least based on animal model findings. Thus, it is feasible that in the highly representative group of Kanner type ASD subjects OXT could have a beneficial effect on social communication and social interaction. The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the feasibility and adverse events, such as epilepsy, of the long-term administration of intranasal OXT for adolescent and adult ASD subjects with ID because such patients frequently have seizures. We also addressed the question on how to scale the OXT effects to the core symptoms of social deficits because of the relative difficulty in obtaining objective measurements. Twenty-nine males (aged 15-40 years old) participated in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study (each for 8 weeks) with OXT (16 international units per day). Except for seizures experienced by one participant, other serious adverse events did not occur. The primary and secondary outcomes measured using the Childhood Autism Rating Scale and several standard scales, respectively, revealed no difference between the OXT and placebo groups. Instead, in an exploratory analysis, the social interactions observed in the play sessions or in daily-life were significantly more frequent in the initial half period in the OXT-first arm of the crossover trial. There were also significant correlations between the plasma OXT concentration and subscale scores for irritability on the Aberrant Behavior Checklist. In conclusion, this pilot study demonstrates that long-term administration of intranasal OXT is tolerable in a representative cohort of ASD individuals with ID and suggests that future multicenter trials of OXT are warranted and should include measurements of reciprocal social interactions based on daily life under closer surveillance for epilepsy. Trial registration: UMIN000007250.

Rapid and significant developments in the science of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) have provoked serious social and ethical concerns as well as positive influences worldwide. This study created a social agenda containing 21 important issues regarding the relationship between ASDs and society and the development of the science of ASDs. The agenda was constructed with the input of a variety of Japanese people who were provided with scientific ASD information and engaged in discussions regarding ASDs. First, opinions were sought via a questionnaire from the attendees of six science café sessions. Then, additional important issues were put forward by attendees of a larger dialogue session regarding the relationship between ASDs and society, again via a questionnaire. The agenda covered a wide range of issues, including information regarding ASDs, people’s understanding of ASDs, social support, education, the difference between ASD characteristics and individuality, ASD research, diagnosis, and social attitudes.