Thesis (M.S.)--University of Toledo, 2009. / "In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences (Bioinformatics and Proteomics-Genomics)." Title from title page of PDF document. Bibliography: p. 52-57.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of West Florida, 2009. / Submitted to the School of Education. Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 121 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-98).

published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Background: Autistic spectrum disorder or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is nowadays remained a global issue as well as in Hong Kong. Since the earlier the children with ASD get intervened, the better the result they will receive. Early Intensive Behavioral Intensive Intervention (EIBI) based on a clinic or center setting is now provided in Hong Kong. Due to the limited resources and developed diagnosis and screening tool for ASD, there exists a long waiting time for the children to get access to the services. No review on comparing early interventions based on home or preschool setting other than EIBI had been conducted for the children with ASD in Hong Kong, which are most likely benefit for the children who are on the waiting list. Objective: (i) This systematic review is on the randomize control trials of the early interventions other than EIBI to identify interventions that can be conveyed or mediated by non-professionals in a non-clinical or center based setting that might be possible to implement in Hong Kong. (ii) To evaluate the effectiveness of the early interventions on development such as intellectual, cognitive and social behavior for the children from 0-6 years with ASD. Methods: A systematic review of RCTs is conducted. Studies were searched in PubMed, MEDLINE and EMBASE by using MeSH. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to the selection process. RCTs that target on the effect of early interventions for the toddlers/preschoolers other than EIBI based on a non-clinical setting delivered by non-professionals were included in this review. Studies mainly focused on the screening or diagnose of early onset ASD were excluded. Results: Out of 319 RCTs were retrieved from the database with 16 of them were included and analyzed in this review. 12 kinds of early interventions are identified with 11 them carried out under a home or preschool setting, 1 of them carried out under a clinical setting by using acupuncture. Large effect size was found in Qi-gong (ES=0.59, 0.80, 0.85; p<0.05), Joint attention (JA) (ES=0.44, 0.67; p<0.05 and ES=1.09, 0.74, 0.88; p<0.05), Preschool Autism Communication Trial (PACT) (ES=1.22, 0.41, 0.33; p<0.05), Autism 1-2-3 (χ2=-2.85, -2.65, -2.81, -2.69; p<0.01), and Communication focused Interpersonal Synchrony (IS) (ES=0.86; p<0.05) interventions, which all intervened with high intensity. Children with ASD showed large improvement in the development outcomes from these studies. Conclusions: Early interventions based on a home or preschool setting delivered by parents and teachers are identified in this systematic review and can be used for children diagnosed with ASD who are on a waitlist and not be able to go to a therapy center. Intervention with higher intensity such as JA, PACT, Qi-gong and Communication focused intervention are highly recommended to do pilot study in Hong Kong as none of them have been applied in Hong Kong before. Since Autism 1-2-3 study were done in Hong Kong with a good compliance and the effective result, it is a recommended for the Department of Health and Non-governmental organizations to consider providing these interventions for the children diagnose as ASD. / published_or_final_version / Public Health / Master / Master of Public Health

<p>Developmental disabilities, including intellectual disability (ID), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and autism spectrum disorders (ASD), affect approximately 1 in 6 children in the United States. Attempts to produce treatment for developmental disabilities have been hampered by our current lack of understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying these disorders. Advancements in genome sequencing and animal modeling technologies have proven to be an invaluable resource in the elucidation of potential disease mechanisms, with recent studies reporting novel mutations of the Ptchd1 and Shank3 genes in patients with developmental disabilities. Though these two genes have been proposed to play important roles in neural development, their function in the normal brain and defective behavioral output are poorly understood. </p><p>In this dissertation, I characterize the circuit and behavioral dysfunction of the genetically-engineered Ptchd1 and Shank3 knockout mice. With respect to Ptchd1, I found that expression is developmentally enriched in the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN), which is a group of GABAergic neurons serving as the major source of inhibition for thalamo-cortical neurons. Slice and in vivo electrophysiological experiments revealed that deletion of this gene in mice disrupts SK2 currents and burst firing mechanisms in the TRN, a region that has previously been shown to play an important role in sleep, attention, and cognition. Consistent with clinical findings, Ptchd1 knockout mice display behavioral phenotypes indicative of hyperactivity, attention deficits, motor dysfunction, hyperaggression, and cognitive impairment. Interestingly, attention-like deficits and hyperactivity are rescued by SK2 pharmacological enhancement, suggesting a potential molecular target for developing treatment. </p><p>Shank3 knockout mice display ASD-like phenotypes, including social interaction deficits and repetitive behaviors. In addition, biochemical, electrophysiological, and morphological abnormalities were discovered in the medium spiny neurons (MSNs) of these mice. However, the exact neural circuits and cell types responsible for the autistic-like behaviors have not been identified. To address this important question, I developed a new conditional Shank3 knockout mouse. Importantly, the behavioral abnormalities reported in the original Shank3 knockout mice were recapitulated in this novel conditional Shank3 knockout mouse, indicating that this mouse may be useful for future pathway-specific dissections of ASD-like behaviors. Together, these two sets of studies not only provide mouse models for dissecting the function of PTCHD1and SHANK3 in normal and abnormal neural development, but also demonstrate a critical role for PTCHD1 in TRN neurons and SHANK3 in MSN cells and in the case of PTCHD1, identify potential cellular and circuit pathway targets for much-needed pharmacological intervention.</p> / Dissertation

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) use atypical approaches when processing facial stimuli. The first purpose of this research was to investigate face processing abilities in adults with ASD using several tasks, to compare patterns of interference between static identity and expression processing in adults with ASD and typical adults, and to investigate whether the introduction of dynamic cues caused members of one or both groups to shift from a global to a more local processing strategy. The second purpose was to compare the gaze behaviour of groups of participants as they viewed static and dynamic single- and multiple-character scenes. I tested 16 adults with ASD and 16 sex-, age-, and IQ-matched typical controls. In Study 1, participants completed a task designed to assess processing speed, another to measure visual processing bias, and two tasks involving static and dynamic face stimuli -- an identity-matching task and a Garner selective attention task. Adults with ASD were less sensitive to facial identity, and, unlike typical controls, showed negligible interference between identity and expression processing when judging both static and moving faces. In Study 2, participants viewed scenes while their gaze behaviour was recorded. Overall, participants with ASD showed fewer and shorter fixations on faces compared to their peers. Additionally, whereas the introduction of motion and increased social complexity of the scenes affected the gaze behaviour of typical adults, only the latter manipulation affected adults with ASD. My findings emphasize the importance of using dynamic displays when studying typical and atypical face processing mechanisms. / October 2015

Background: The skill to attribute mental states to the self and others, or Theory of Mind (ToM), is a problem seen universally amongst children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and may also affect the ability to make inferences about characters while reading narrative text. Aim: The aim of this study was to teach four male participants with ASD an explicit cognitive strategy to answer inferential questions and provide feedback regarding their answers to improve their reading comprehension and ToM. Method: A single case study ABC design was used to assess the effect of the intervention. The participants read five short narrative passages each session for 20 sessions, and answered one factual and one inferential question following each passage. Specific feedback was used to respond to the answers of each question in the intervention phase. Pre- and post-intervention levels of reading comprehension and ToM were measured. Results: All four participants improved their reading comprehension in a pre and post-intervention test and three of the four participants improved their ToM understanding, although their ability to answer inferential questions involving ToM did not improve greatly. Limitations: Limitations of the study include not asking enough inferential questions involving ToM each session. During post-hoc analysis of the results it became clear that the participants could have benefited from more practice of using the strategy. Individual reading ability should have been assessed before the intervention began to determine the appropriate reading level at the beginning of the intervention. Conclusions: The explicit cognitive strategy had limited effect on participant’s ability to answer inferential questions involving ToM; however the participants improved their scores on pre and post-intervention tests of reading comprehension and ToM. These results suggest that making inferences in text may involve ToM and that the problems seen in the reading comprehension profiles of children with ASD may be attributed to their limited ToM skills.

Recorded by Eugene Barsky, Physiotherapy Outreach Librarian, UBC / This is a Systematic Review Presentation titled - "TEffects of Exercise Interventions on Stereotypic Behaviors of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder", created by Master of Physical Therapy Graduating Students, University of British Columbia - 2006, Presented on September 14-15, 2006 , Vancouver, BC, Canada

No previous studies have examined how those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) communicate or cope with symptoms of acute physical illness. Effective management of illness is important as it is related to an individual’s overall health and has implications for the spread of disease. I hypothesized that youth with and without ASD would demonstrate important differences in illness management. In the present study, I investigated parent- and self-perceptions of illness communication and coping behaviour in high-functioning (HF) youth with and without ASD. Participants were 24 youth with HFASD and 24 age-, sex- and IQ-matched controls, aged 9 to 17 years, and one of their parents. Data related to participants’ social communication, daily living skills, illness experience, and illness knowledge were also collected. Parent and self-reports of illness communication and coping behaviour were assessed using vignettes depicting characters with various ailments. Based on parent-reports, typically developing youth communicate illness using direct means (e.g., verbal reports) and utilize active (e.g., intervention-seeking) coping behaviours to manage ailments. In contrast, youth with HFASD were reported to use direct communication less frequently than controls. As such, parents of those with HFASD reported that they rely on observations of their children’s sick behaviour to determine when they are ill more frequently than parents in the control group. Youth in the control group were also reported to use more passive (e.g., emotionality, self-isolation, passive adherence) means of coping when ill with acute physical ailments, when compared to parent reports. Self-reports indicated that youth with HFASD perceived themselves as having significantly more “typical” illness behaviours (e.g., utilization of direct communication and active coping strategies) than their parents reported, whereas youth and parent reports in the control group were more consistent overall. Results of this study will provide important information for parents and practitioners that may subsequently be used to help children with ASD develop strategies for communicating about and coping with illness effectively. A model, emphasizing skill deficits that may prevent youth with HFASD from managing illness effectively, was also developed. Limited insight in the domain of health behaviour may be a particularly important focus for future interventions.