The Editors are pleased to introduce Professor Kim Cornish as Guest Editor for this, the first special issue of the International Journal of Developmental Disabilities (IJDD). This edition focuses on autism and its effects on adaptive/behaviour areas.
I am pleased to present this special edition of the journal with a focus on autism symptomatology and its impact across cognitive, adaptive and behavioural domains. Autism is a complex disorder and this issue of the IJDD highlights six international studies that demonstrate the importance of careful investigation across the early developmental years.
Beginning in early childhood McCary et al. investigate the development of adaptive functioning in toddlers and pre-schoolers with autism compared to those with fragile X syndrome (a genetic disorder that co-occurs with autism in approximately 40% of cases). Their findings suggest dynamic profiles across age but with important differences in socialisation skills and motor development. Although both children with autism and children with fragile X syndrome appear similarly impaired in the toddlers years they diverge with increasing age. Cornish et al. also focus on fragile X syndrome in a longitudinal study that looks at the impact of co-morbid autism and/or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on cognitive performance over time. Their findings suggest that that having an additional diagnosis of autism and/or ADHD does significantly impact on performance compared to a single diagnosis of fragile X alone. However, the study also found that children improved with age when ‘growth’ scores, these are scores that are not referenced against standardised scores but instead are charted against individual improvements on the child’s own scores across domain, were used indicating developmental change in cognitive abilities.
Developing literacy skills in nonverbal children with autism is the focus of an article by Goh and colleagues and their findings demonstrate the critical role of innovative literacy training programs in developing reading and writing skills. Providing teachers with techniques to improve attention, especially attentional focus, and motor control as part of the literacy curriculum improves outcomes.
Philpott et al. and Williams et al. focus on investigating emotion and social understanding in children with autism. Philpott and colleagues used a novel comic strip measure to tap theory of mind in older children with autism and found comparable performance to that of typically developmentally chronological age matched children, suggesting an age-related improvement in theory of mind skills from that typically found in much younger children with autism. Williams and colleagues investigated the association between severity of autism symptomatology and emotion recognition specifically the ability of young children with autism to recogniseeveryday facial expressions of emotion (e.g. happiness, anger) and also recognise emotions in contextual settings. Their findings suggest an association between a higher degree of autism severity and poorer accuracy on recognising emotions in all but contextual settings.
Finally the Points of View paper provides an intriguing perspective of autism from an insider experience. College students with autism were interviewed across broad themes (e.g. what does autism mean to you?), and findings indicated an awareness of the range of complexities in interpersonal relationships but also highlighted concerns about a perceived lack of understanding about autism from those in the non-autism community. The use of an ‘expert author’ in this case, someone who has autism, was a novel and engaging approach.
We hope the readers find this mini compendium of articles covering a range of issues for those with autism from experts in the field of interest and welcome any feedback.