Believing that you’re involved in a live interaction, even when you’re not, is enough to activate the social brain, according to unpublished work presented today at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Two new studies, both by reputable teams of researchers, report that there are no detectable differences between boys and girls with autism.

Many well-designed studies are testing the effectiveness of therapies parents can administer to their children, but few check whether the parents are able to follow the treatment plan. 

A new interaction-based therapy delivered by parents may improve behavior and language skills in infants with autism symptoms, suggests a small pilot study.

The common belief that people with autism look at people’s mouths instead of their eyes is inaccurate and has little evidence, say Nouchine Hadjikhani and Quentin Guillon.
 

Roughly one-third of children with fragile X syndrome also have an autism diagnosis. Studies published in the past few months, however, suggest that the set of autism-like symptoms seen in people with fragile X syndrome may only resemble autism superficially.

The best predictors of treatment outcomes for children with autism may be subtle learning characteristics that are not specific to children with the disorder, rather than the symptoms that led to their diagnosis, say David Trembath and Giacomo Vivanti.

Evidence is finally accumulating that early diagnosis and behavioral interventions improve the lives of people with autism. Even so, increasingly the question isn’t just whether early intervention works but also the best age at which to intervene.

Children with autism develop interactive skills late and many lose at least one skill by 3 years of age, says a study published in November.

Babies later diagnosed with autism tend to stare at objects after picking them up at much later ages than controls do, according to a study published in Behavioral Brain Research.