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This study aims to compare the emotional impairment in ASD and ADHD using event-related potentials (ERP).

For children with ASD:

#There are abnormalities in the allocation of resources to process faces and structural encoding of faces;

#Deficits in the processing of negative emotions as indexed by emotion recognition;

#Reduced differentiation between fear and neutral expression.

For children with ADHD:

#Reduced differentiation of happy faces compared to neutral faces -> deficits towards positive stimuli;

#Reduced differentiation of fearful faces compared to neutral faces -> deficits in recognising threat-related expressions

#In addition to a deficit in an executive function network, multiple neural pathways contribute to ADHD and abnormalities.

#Children with ADHD have unique deficits in evaluating emotion's meaning and context, regardless of comorbid ASD diagnoses.

*Children with ASD exhibit alterations at the structural encoding stage, whereas children with ADHD display abnormalities during the contextual processing stage. In the comorbid ASD + ADHD group, both disorders present distinct deficits.

*Objective neural measures of emotion processing can be used to understand the pathophysiology of complex overlapping disorders better.

It is interesting to know the differences between ASD and ADHD in recognizing emotions.

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From this article, I discovered that there is no apparent bidirectional relationship between ASD core symptoms and anxiety in children with ASD. On the other hand, higher levels of anxiety contribute to higher levels of social communication difficulties over time. This information challenged my initial thinking of the presence of social impairments in children with ASD leading to anxiety in them. But, this article led me to think otherwise. Research also articulated the importance of identifying, assessing and treating anxiety problems in a timely manner to help improve the social and emotional functioning of children with ASD.

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This paper was eye-opening as I have never thought that these learning disabilities would impact children's physical and healthy development. Thinking about it, it does affect their physical levels to a certain extent. Something that stood out to me was that autism is a developmental disorder that's a spectrum, meaning children with autism may experience mild, moderate, or severe symptoms and impairments. This may affect their physical levels differently too.

I've encountered autistic children with different personalities and physical abilities. Some of them may also already have comorbid conditions that have an impact on their physical capabilities. Many studies have shown that children with autism can have varying degrees of difficulty with fine and gross motor skills. According to Autism Speaks (2018), Many individuals with autism have lower fitness skills compared to other people. These skills include balance, body coordination, visual-motor control and other mobility skills.

Just last semester, we interviewed a mum of a 7-year-old child with mild autism. She did mention that coordination in swimming doesn't happen as well for the child. The child still enjoys running but has little control over how fast or slow she is going.

Another one of my students is amazing in her gross motor skills and learnt how to swim on her own and is doing very well in gymnastic classes. She absolutely loves nature and spends hours hiking and riding bikes across the country with her mum.

Another child with mild autism I met,  absolutely hates running.

I have seen such diverse levels of physical activity across these three children with mild autism and wonder if it could be due to other factors as well. Their family upbringing and take on play and food intake does make a huge difference too. It was a good read to keep us aware on the topic.

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This paper looked at three groups of children - children with ASD
- children with ADHD
- children with ASD+ADHD

My AHA moment from this article is that the result showed that children with ASD+ADHD may have deficits for inhibitory processing and attention orienting. When looked at it together and understanding that ASD may also present with comorbid ADHD, it really puts into perspective that as classroom teachers, a better understanding is required to be able to ensure that the right environment is giving for these students to gel in.

I think this article was an interesting read on brain functioning and understanding more about the three groups.

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My main takeaway from this article is that anxiety symptoms contributes to higher levels of social communication impairment and not the other way round. Previously, my perception was the ASD core symptoms contributes the risk of developing anxiety symptoms. This is because individuals with ASD struggles with their deficits which can lead to a daily stressor which inevitably may contribute to elevated anxiety levels. Definitely a thought provoking article which made me wants to find out more about how anxiety can affect children with ASD. Especially, recently there has been an emphasis on mental wellness. I feel that as educators we should have a rough idea about this as well.

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People with ASD have behaviors or interests that can seem unusual and they must follow certain instructions or gets upset by minor changes. These behaviors or interests set ASD apart from conditions defined by problems with social communication and interaction only.
This article highlighted on how higher levels of anxiety symptoms increase the risk of more social communication impairment over time in children with ASD. They also discussed on the importance of treating anxiety symptoms to improve both social and emotional functioning.
With almost 40% of the children with ASD have clinically elevated levels of anxiety or at least one anxiety disorder, the article suggests a unidirectional relationship of anxiety symptoms and indicates the importance of assessing and treating anxiety problems timely to improve both the social and emotional functioning of children with ASD.
With reduced and controlled anxiety, there is a possible relation to their the emotional and social developments.

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This paper actually made me ponder about what was shared during our lesson time. The fact that more research has to be done with regard to comorbidity, but then again, these comorbidities vary so much that it may be impractical to pinpoint and actually do a research on a specific comorbidity.
I felt this article does not provide the reader a conclusive result as the sample size is small. The article itself mentions that the findings have yielded inconsistent results. What was significant was that the ASD symptom severity of children with DS + ASD differs from their peers with DS-only and ASD-only. Implying DS + ASD impairments in core social relatedness skills in youth could impact this group’s ability to learn effectively from their environment, resulting in lower verbal and general cognitive abilities for this group. The authors qualify this statement by mentioning that further studies have to be made. However, it is good to take note that these youths need possible support and timely intervention. Hence, early identification is essential to provide this support and guidance.

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It is an interesting (and tough) read to see how neuroscience is slowly gaining traction in the area of studying learning disabilities.

In this study, the measurements of distinct temporal stages in emotional processing is used to study emotional impairment between ASD and ADHD, looking at the responses to emotional faces show to participants.

A few key takeaways from the reading are :
1. The findings from the n170 effects shows evidence of deficits in processing negative emotions in ASD children. Partly also because of their lack of eye contact characteristic.

2.  Children with ADHD, uniquely has deficits in evaluation of meaning and context of emotions.

one purpose of the study is really to show that even though there are commonality in certain traits of both conditions, there are distinct differences in how they respond to emotional faces and specific deficits.

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This paper compared the symptoms of DS + ASD comorbidity in children vs those only with either ASD or DS. There is research suggesting that those with DS have a higher chance of comorbidity with ASD but at the same time not much research has been done on these groups of kids (ASD+DS). It was interesting that there were significant differences between these 3 groups. The results showed that those with both DS+ASD had more severe social-communication and RBI impairments vs the other 2 groups.

I agree with the authors that more research needs to be done, as they had quite a small sample size. Not only that if there were significant impairments for those with ASD+DS it would mean that we would need to tailor the EI services to have a mixture of those from DS and from ASD for this group of kids, more Evidence Based Practice needs to be done to find out what works. Not only that, but they also need to be identified at a younger age similar to those with ASD to work on their social communication needs.

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It’s interesting how this study aims to look at whether moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) has any relation to a child being diagnosed with ASD. However results showed that children with ASD engage in the same levels of MVPA as typically developing children.

This paper also looks at future studies to determine if the ecological model that comprises of the individual domain (sleep issues, co-morbid difficulties), familial domains (low income, lack social support) and physical environment domain (reduced access to parks and recreational services) has a more distinct correlation of MVPA with the group differences.

When looking at the ecological framework of a child, I believe more factors come together to show how the lack of can have an impact on the MVPA of a child with ASD. In fact one other study that compared sleep patterns and MVPA. Although a bigger sample size was later found to have had to be bigger, there was note on a correlation.

Access to free play and role modelling definitely plays an important role in children having better physical fitness and mental well being. However to see the correlation between typically developing children and those with ASD, there are more research to be conducted to determine the correlation.

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It was interesting to note that individuals with ASD + ADHD have greater impairment in adaptive functioning in all domains as compared to individuals with ASD or ADHD. It was interesting to note that there was no studies done between all three different groups.

Through the research, individuals with ASD + ADHD had the lowest scores for socialisation and lesser deficits in communication and DLS. The research also did mention that interventions that target only autism symptoms may not be sufficient to improve adaptive skills.

Through this research, more is needed to understand how best adaptive skills can be taught to three different groups of individuals. Those with ASD, those with ADHD and those with ASD + ADHD. Through my own experience, an evidence based practice is video modelling, where video modelling provides a first hand view of how a skill is executed. Maybe more research can be conducted to examine its effectiveness on the three different groups of individuals.

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After reading this article, I reflected upon my role as an educator, where I used to be very focused on the child's needs and well-being, providing suggestions to parents and having the expection that they should complete the tasks provided for the benefit of their child.
Though it should have been evident, but I just understood from this week's session, how stressful it would be on the parents as their child's caregivers, and the amount of support that they need for themselves.

The article mentioned that parents are encouraged and becoming more involved and active in the delivery of a variety of interventions for their children who have ASD, and their behaviour is an important aspect that can directly affect the parent-child relationships. Hence, maybe next time, I can make it a point to check in on parents' well-being, and try to accommodate more, to work a plan together to provide to their child, as well as their needs.

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This paper presented 14 groups of findings to support the argument that ASD lacks neurological and construct validity, including findings from brain research, symptom research and feature research on ASD.
I agree with the author's proposal that future research should disband the ASD diagnosis because an ASD defined sample is over-inclusive of many non-diagnostic symptoms to validate the scientific inference. However, we also need to address the emotional aspect of parents when we move away from it. As the 'spectrum' in ASD suggests a 'spectrum', which includes the high functioning type or even giftedness in a particular area, the diagnosis of ASD may be more acceptable for parents compared to a diagnosis of ID, emotional disturbance, and learning disability, which the ASD child may have. This may be the reason why there is a 331% increase in ASD diagnosis in the USA between 2000 and 2010, and a decrease in diagnosis of ID, emotional disturbance and learning disability in the same period, although the total number of diagnosis did not change.
My reflection from reading this paper is that perhaps it is time to go back to the purpose of a diagnosis. Is the diagnosis going to help the child access intervention services, get the medicine to control the symptoms, get a placement in mainstream/SPED school, or apply for access arrangement in examinations?

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Study of ASD in the 1940s focused on the mother being the cause. Then it shifted to the biological causes. De-emphasis on parents resulted in a knowledge gap of parenting children with ASD.

Definition of domains of parenting style dimensions :
a.      acceptance versus rejection;

b.      psychological control versus autonomy;

c.      firm control versus lax control

Current study is a comparison of parenting style of 3 groups of children : TD (Typically developed), ANX (Anxiety), ASD (Autism).

Findings are :
a. parents of children with anxiety reported experiences of heightened anxiety themselves compared with parents of children with ASD and TD children, although this was not associated with any domains of parenting style.
b. parents of children with ASD reported greater levels of depressive symptoms than parents of children with anxiety, and parents of TD children to a lesser degree. However, the depressive symptoms was not associated with parenting style.

The children’s behavioural symptoms play the most dominant role in shaping parenting behaviour.

Recommendations :
a. direct intervention on maladaptive behaviour or teach parents how to manage.
b. need to provide additional parental support when working with parents of children with ASD.
c. identify critical time window for interventions. Around the time of their child receiving ASD diagnosis seem to benefit parent and child.

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This is the first-of-its kind of study to investigate, using 4 groups of children – those who are typically developing, those with ADHD, those with ASD and those with ADHD + ASD,

(1) differences in the neurophysiological correlates of attention and inhibition in strictly defined cases of ASD and ADHD and

(2) whether these markers were shared or distinct in co-morbid ASD +ADHD, using an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm that has been used in previous studies of ADHD

The ERP allows sensitive measurement of distinct temporal stages in overt and covert cognitive processing.

-          Abnormal inhibitory processing was found in children with ADHD group

-          Problems in shifting from one response to another was found in children with ASD group

-          Presence of compensatory strategy/ alternative mechanism (in preparing for upcoming stimulus) to strengthen inhibitory control found in children with ASD group

Children with ASD have behavioural difficulties in the ability to flexibly shift to different cognitive demands (Hill, 2004) and disengage attention. Children with ADHD display neurophysiological abnormalities in attentional orienting, inhibitory processing and behavioural deficits in task performance, suggestive of specific deficits compared to ASD, along with widespread attentional dyscontrol

Findings from group differences for diagnostic status and correlations between quantitative trait measures converge to suggest unique deficits across the two disorders. For the majority of findings, children with co-morbid ASD +ADHD display deficits of both disorders suggestive of an additive co-occurrence, rather than a separate condition with a distinct pattern of deficits.

The findings indicate that there may be specific neuronal abnormalities in attention for ASD and ADHD, and suggest an additive model of ASD +ADHD. This complements and extends cognitive findings and suggests that previous inconsistent findings in the literature may be due to misspecification in group allocation. Along with accumulating evidence of co-occurring ADHD and ASD, this supports the adoption of a broader view of the psychopathology (the scientific study of mental illness or disorders) when assessing the underlying pathophysiology (the study of abnormal changes in body functions that are the causes, consequences, or concomitants of disease processes).

As I was reading this article, it reminds me of teachers who often flagged out children with poor eye contact and focus to be suspected of ASD while some others also noticed attentional concerns in children with autism. Some of these differences in difficulties faced in children with one or the other disorder only may be subtle (and confusing), but this article, although novel, may be able to help educators put in place more appropriate strategies to support students with either ASD or ADHD instead of using general strategies for both conditions (which often ends up not being effective for one or both groups of students). This study again brings up the importance of supporting children by their needs and not so much of their conditions – if we understand the needs of the children well, we will be able to support them better.

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My key takeaway:

ASD begins in prenatal life. ASD it is clinically detectable and highly diagnostically stable by 14 months of age.
Most ASD risk genes are expressed prenatally in many ASD-relevant brain regions and fall into two categories: broadly expressed regulatory genes that are expressed in the brain and other organs, and brain-specific genes.

[Refer to Figure 1 above] Recent computational, cell-line model, animal model, clinical, genetic, and postmortem findings show that ASD is a highly heritable, multistage, multiprocess, progressive brain-wide disorder of prenatal and early postnatal development, with prenatal subtypes leading to clinical outcome heterogeneity.

It is critical to discover how these ASD prenatal processes are mechanistically linked with early-age ASD neural and clinical features.

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The article focused on the deficits in executive functions in children with ASD-only, children with ADHD-only and children with ASD+ADHD.

My key AHA for this article are, the results showed children with ASD +ADHD have impaired preparatory processes compared to children with ASD-only, and further that children with ASD-only allocate more cognitive resources to prepare for the upcoming stimulus compared to children with ASD +ADHD and TD children. I think these results may explain that the function of preparatory processes of children with ASD-only helps them to be hyperfocused on the task than other group of children sometimes.

Besides, the results also showed that task performance was impaired in both ADHD groups (ADHD-only and ASD+ADHD). These may link back to the preparatory processes, as if the function of helping to focus on task have impairment, it will direct affect the task performance. For TD children, even though their preparatory processes were not as well as children with ASD-only, but they can make themselves to focus on task, and this is what children with ASD and ADHD are hardly to do so.

Overall, this study provided more evidence on brain functioning to explain the performance of children with ASD, ADHD and ASD+ADHD.

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After reading this article, I learnt that physical activity is a complex and multidimensional behaviour essential for healthy development of individuals, including those with ASD. Physical activity is dependent on variables in three domains: individual, familial and physical environment domains. There has been a gap in existing literature on the associations between moderate and vigorous intensity physical activity (MVIPA) and the ecological domains (individual, familial and environment) in 4 to 7 years old children with ASD. This study aims to bridge this gap.

Interesting, the authors found that children aged between 4 and 7 years of ASD will experience similar levels of MVIPA compared to typical developing children. In the individual domains, the authors found that there is an association between sleep problems (one of the variables in this domain) and reduced levels of physical activity (i.e., MVIPA) although this association was not significantly different from the typically developing group. This could be due to a small sample size or associations between MVIPA or sleep  issues are similar for both typically  developing children with ASD.

In the familial domain variables, the author found that parental beliefs was an important factor in influencing MVIPA in the ASD group only. Again, however, this association was insignificant from the typical developing group. Furthermore, in the physical environment domain, the authors found that there were associations between suitability of playgrounds and child MVIPA in the ASD group only. This suggest that suitability of playgrounds may play a bigger role in the level of MVIPA for children with ASD.

After reading this article, one important Aha moment is that highlights a potential association between sleep and MVIPA in children with ASD, sleep impairments are associated with a more severe phenotype of ASD. As educators, we need to work with parents to ensure that our students with ASD have sufficient sleep and MVIPA so that we can mitigate the severity of the core ASD symptoms, and the child can be better engaged in school and in MVIPA. Another Aha moment is that as parent beliefs affects ASD children to engage in MVIPA, as educators, we can work with the parents to convince them of the importance of MVIPA and support them in guiding their children with ASD to be engaged in MVIPA as frequent as possible. This is because if children with ASD are engaged in the recommended a sufficient amount of physical activity, they would enjoy favorable health outcomes, including a lower risk of obesity and diabetes, and improved mental health, quality of life and cognitive development, regardless of diagnosis.

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This article is a very very heavy read, but the findings and efforts display hope that there are countless researches out there trying ways and means to understand ASD.

I appreciate the authors' initiatives to review ASD research and address the crossroad the research industry is currently facing. By understanding the different functions of the brain, diagnostic symptoms and genetic heredity, this articles concludes that there are no concrete evidences that acknowledge ASD validity.

I do agree that continuous ASD research could be irrelevant in future studies from the data presented here. Perhaps we could move away from the medical model and focus on supporting the symptoms and needs of such individuals. TD brain is very complex in itself. As such, knowing the parts of the brain that are responsible for distinct characteristics such as social impairments and social behaviors would be sufficient in suggesting appropriate and possible behavioral intervention for now.

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An interesting insight that I read in the article were the results of the study that showed that children with ASD had the lowest adaptive functioning scores, followed by children with ASD and ADHD, children with ADHD, and typically developing children. The study also found that children with ASD and ADHD had lower adaptive functioning scores than children with only ADHD. The findings of the study emphasize the importance of considering co-occurring conditions when assessing adaptive functioning in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. I find this relevant to students with ASD in schools as assessing adaptive functioning can help identify areas of strength and weakness in students with ASD and inform the development of individualized education plans (IEPs) that address their unique needs. This can include interventions to improve social skills, communication, self-regulation, and independent living skills, which are important for success both in and outside of the classroom. Overall, this article underscores the importance of a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to supporting students with ASD in schools.