Assessing the diagnostic experiences of a small sample of parents of children with autism spectrum disorders.

Although no Canadian studies have been conducted, studies suggest parents of children with autism experience difficulties obtaining a diagnosis for their child. Fifty-six parents of children with autism completed three questionnaires providing information on the families' demographics, parents' experiences throughout the diagnostic process, and their child's autistic symptomatology. These parents experienced significant difficulties obtaining a diagnosis for their child. Parents saw an average of 4.5 professionals, and waited almost 3 years to receive a diagnosis following their first visit to a professional regarding their child's development. The impact of autistic symptomatology on the diagnostic process is discussed.

Assessing need for social support in parents of children with autism and Down syndrome.

Parents of children with autism frequently turn to the service delivery system to access supports designed to help adapt to the challenges of having a child with a life-long impairment. Although studies have suggested various supports and coping strategies that are effective for adapting, few studies have examined parents' own perceptions of needs, and whether parents felt their needs were being met. In the present study the Family Needs Questionnaire (FNQ; Waaland et al., 1993) was modified to address needs for children with developmental disorders. A sample of fifty-six parents of children with autism and a comparison group of thirty-two parents of children with Down syndrome completed the FNQ. The groups did not differ significantly on the number of important needs reported nor the number of important needs being met. However, the two groups differed in the types of supports they most frequently endorsed as Important or Unmet.

Emotion recognition in children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.

There is a limited amount of research that examines social-emotional functioning in children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), and the majority of it relies on parent and teacher reports of social impairments. Because these provide broad measures of social function, they fail to elucidate the underlying specific skills with which this group of children has difficulty. The current study examines emotion-recognition abilities in children with FASD, as it plays a central role in social interaction. Participants were 22 children with diagnosed FASD (ages 8-14), and age- and gender-matched typically developing controls. Tasks included measures of emotion recognition from three nonlinguistic modalities: facial expressions, emotional tone of voice, and body positioning and movement. Participant's parents completed measures of adaptive and behavioral function that were related to children's performance on aspects of emotion recognition. Overall, the results show that children with FASD have more difficulties with emotion recognition than typically developing age-matched peers, but these difficulties may not be clinically significant (e.g., smaller effect size) or may be specific to the age of the individual exhibiting the emotion (i.e., child vs. adult). These results are discussed in the context of previous studies.

Assessing multitasking in children with ADHD using a modified Six Elements Test.

The study was designed to investigate whether children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) demonstrate a deficit in multitasking, measured by their performance on a modified Six Elements Test designed for use with children (C-SET). The C-SET was administered to 38 children, aged 7-13. The subjects comprised two groups: an ADHD sample (n = 19) and a community control sample (n = 19). The results show that the ADHD group performed significantly worse on the C-SET, in that they attempted fewer tasks than the control group. However, they did not commit more rule breaks. These findings suggest that children with ADHD did not have problems with retrospective memory, as they were as able to remember the rules as the control group. Rather, the ADHD children appeared to have a specific deficit in monitoring their ongoing behaviors and generating useful strategies for task completion, as indicated by the decreased number of tasks attempted compared to the control group. The number of tasks tried on the C-SET correlated significantly with a measure of working memory, but not with a measure of response inhibition. C-SET total tasks tried also correlated with all subscales of the Conner's Parent Rating Scale-Revised (Short Version). The C-SET appears to be a useful measure of rule-governed multitasking behavior in children.