An interactive assessment allows clinicians and researchers to evaluate an autistic child’s use of language in everyday social situations.

Communication problems have always been considered a core feature of autism. Yet there are substantial and wide-ranging differences in how people with autism communicate.

People on the spectrum often have subtle problems using language or making facial expressions. Pinpointing where those difficulties originate may help ease their social communication.

A diagnosis of social communication disorder only keeps people from a community and resources they desperately want and need.

Studying parents of children with autism has long been controversial, but that doesn’t mean scientists should avoid it.

A brain system called declarative memory may help people learn scripts and strategies that alleviate autism symptoms, say Michael Ullman and Mariel Pullman.

Many toddlers with autism display so few abnormal behaviors during short doctor visits that they may evade the diagnostic eye of even expert clinicians.

Some siblings of children with autism have social language impairments that may signal another, more controversial disorder.

A new device designed to conduct magneto-electroencephalography in children younger than 3 years is ideal for detecting early signs of autism, researchers reported 3 March in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 

Mice lacking the autism-linked gene CNTNAP2 process sounds more slowly than control mice do but are better at discriminating between tones. The unpublished research was presented Tuesday at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.