Season of birth in infantile autism

Existing evidence suggests an excess of winter births in schizophrenia and inconsistent results for other psychiatric conditions. The present study examined seasonal effects of birth among autistic individuals. Results revealed an excess of spring and carly summer births and an underrepresentation of winter and fall births. However, this pattern was obtained only for the male, nonverbal, and lower-functioning autistic subgroup.This project was supported in part by the Ontario Mental Health Foundation Grant #988-84/86.     

Maternal speech to verbal and higher functioning versus nonverbal and lower functioning autistic children

The relationship between autistic children's level of functioning and maternal speech to children was examined. Ten higher functioning verbal and 10 lower functioning nonverbal children were videotaped in a 15-minute interaction with their mothers. Results revealed that mothers of the higher functioning verbal children asked more questions, used more language modeling, gave more reinforcement for language, and answered more children-initiated questions than did mothers of the lower functioning nonverbal children. Mothers of the nonverbal children employed more directives, used shorter mean lengths of utterance, and reinforced their children's motoric rather than spoken behavior. Far from being poor models for linguistic behavior, mothers of autistic children appear, therefore, to be quite responsive to their children's relative capabilities.     

Cognitive,perspective-taking skills and quality of play in behaviorally disturbed children

The efficacy of a day treatment program based on Piaget's cognitive-devel opmental theory, was examined with two groups of boys displaying poor peer relations. Following eight months of intervention, gains were observed in cognitive decentration for both groups. Gains in interpersonal perspective-taking were evident only among the older group of boys, while play complexity showed minimal improvement.     

Assessing Child Symptom Severity and Stress in Parents of Autistic Children

Parents of 44 autistic children rated their children's symptom severity and their own stress on a 14-item symptom scale. Thirteen child and family characteristics were also examined to assess how they affected symptom perception and stress. Preschoolers were rated less symptomatic by their parents than by clinicians. Lower functioning, nonverbal, odd-looking, self-abusive, seizuring and hyperirritable children were rated more symptomatic than their peers. Best predictor of stress for both parents was a child's self-abuse; for mothers hyperirritability and older age were also associated with elevated stress scores. Compared with parents of matched normal children, mothers of autistic children reported the most aggravations and expressed the need for additional support from their spouses.     

Effects of developmental disorder on parents: theoretical and applied considerations

Only recently have we begun to examine systematically the effect of dysfunctional children on other family members. This article addresses several issues: (1) It presents two models of family stress, the ABCX and the social ecology model, and discusses how they can be employed for a systematic mapping of known key variables that, in complex interplay, appear to influence the family's ability to cope with a dysfunctional child. (2) It reviews evidence from our own work and research by others related to the main elements of the ABCX model of family stress. (3) It offers an outline of what appear to us to be the key methodologic considerations for improving quality of research in this area. (4) It provides a few recommendations to clinicians working with families of severely dysfunctional children based on the evidence and our clinical experience.     

Brief report: Ear infections in autistic and normal children

The frequency of ear infections, ear tube drainage, and deafness was examined through parental reports in autistic and yoke-matched, normal children. For the autistic group these difficulties were additionally examined as a function of the children's cognitive and communication abilities, verbal versus nonverbal status, sex, and degree of autistic symptomatology. Autistic children had a greater incidence of ear infections than matched normal peers. Lower-functioning children had an earlier onset of ear infections than their higher-functioning autistic peers. Ear infections coexisted with low-set ears, and with a higher autistic symptomatology score. The findings are discussed in terms of greater CNS vulnerability in the autistic children, which is likely present since embryogenesis. The possible adverse consequences of intermittent hearing loss on language, cognitive, and socioaffective development are considered.This project was supported in part by the Ontario Mental Health Foundation Grant No. 899-84/86. A special word of thanks to Dr. T. Barankin for her suggestions.     

Sensorimotor and physiological effects of various alcoholic beverages.

Effects of a standard dose of alcohol (1.3 g/kg) in the form of Canadian rye whisky, Canadian beer and a sparkling table wine were compared with those of a nonalcoholic carbonated control beverage. Sixteen young male and eight female subjects, all moderate drinkers, were tested in a Latin square design. Measurements were made on the pursuit rotor and quantitative Romberg tests, and of skin temperature, heart rate, malar flush and blood alcohol concentration during the prealcohol baseline period and at regular intervals over the 4-hour drinking period. The three alcoholic beverages produced blood alcohol curves that did not differ significantly. All three alcoholic beverages produced increasing sensorimotor impairment over time, which corresponded in degree to the increasing blood alcohol concentration. There were no significant differences between the three beverages on either the sensorimotor or physiological measures at any blood alcohol value. The results of this study indicate that the degree of impairment after alcohol ingestion in a socially relevant manner is not dependent on the type of beverage consumed, but only on the resulting blood alcohol concentration.     

Chromosomal Abnormalities in a Series of Children with Autistic Disorder

In a series of 127 children diagnosed with autistic disorder the karyotypes of 8, on whom data were available, showed the following chromosomal abnormalities: breakage, a 47 XY pattern, trisomy 13, inversion-duplication of chromosome 15, 47 XY, +der (15) (pter q15: p11 pter), 47 XXY and 46 XY, inv (2) (p11:q13pat, 3q+). Compared to those who were not karyotyped or had normal karyotypes, the children with abnormalities, although cognitively more delayed, were not rated as more severely autistic. Facial dysmorphias and minor physical anomalies tended to be more frequent in the chromosomally deviant subgroup. No differences in demographic characteristics or parental ages were evident. Results are consistent with the view of variability of expression of marker chromosome deviations and a greater severity of retardation and symptoms of autism in those affected. The relevance of the findings to a multimodal genetic etiology of autistic disorder is discussed.     

Assessing resources and stress in parents of severely dysfunctional children through the Clarke modification of Holroyd's questionnaire on resources and stress

The Holroyd (1974) Questionnaire on Resources and Stress (QRS) although clinically useful may be too inclusive and not exclusively relevant to severely dysfunctional individuals. Hitherto, efforts at shortening and psychometrically validating the QRS have met with some success: the shorter forms however still target both mentally and physically handicapped children and are clinically not as useful as the original instrument. The 78-item Clarke modification of the QRS, mainly a subset of the original, was an attempt to remedy these problems. It was validated with mothers and fathers of autistic, mentally retarded, learning-disabled, and asymptomatic children. Good internal consistency, split-half reliability, and coefficient of stability were obtained. Construct and concurrent validities were also acceptable. The questionnaire discriminated best between the two more severely affected groups and the controls. Group differences were found for 8 of its 9 scales and sex of parent differences were found for 3. The Clarke modification of the QRS is recommended for clinical use with parents of children with autism and mental retardation.This research was supported in part by a grant from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation #899/1982 in conjunction with the Provincial Lottery Funds. We thank Beth Macklin for her contribution to item selection and data collection and Hau Lei for statistical consultation. Special thanks to the participating parents for their candor, cooperation, and even enthusiasm for the project. Many sincere thanks are also extended to Jean Holroyd and to Clinical Psychology Publishing Company for generously providing the original scale, and for allowing us to publish items from it. To Eric Schopler and his collaborators many thanks for providing the Childhood Autism Rating Scale.