What began as an informal presentation by a clinical linguist to a group of philosophers, has led to some surprising discoveries about the communicative language abilities of people with autism.

Parents of children with autism are increasingly turning to sensory integration treatment to help their children deal with the disorder, and they’re seeing good results. In 2007, 71 percent of parents who pursued alternatives to traditional treatment used sensory integration methods, and 91 percent found these methods helpful.

New research suggests that the average household with children with autism not only spends thousands of dollars toward educational, behavioral and health care expenses each year, but also suffers from a lesser-known cost that hits them up front – a sizeable chunk of missed household income, perhaps as much as $6,200 annually.

Using “virtual peers” -- animated life-sized children that simulate the behaviors and conversation of typically developing children -- Northwestern University researchers are developing interventions designed to prepare children with autism for interactions with real-life children.

The information that a child has been diagnosed with autism often throws parents into an emotional tailspin. A new study from a University of Missouri researcher says most people don't immediately consider the major financial struggles that follow.

New research from the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute and Center for Children’s Environmental Health has found that antibodies in the blood of mothers of children with autism bind to fetal brain cells, potentially interrupting healthy brain development.

There is no evidence for a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) jab and autism, finds research published ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood .

February’s issue of Pediatrics offers another reason to rethink blaming the spike in autism diagnoses on thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative routinely used in several childhood vaccines until the late ‘90s.

Autism researchers at the University of Washington will take the initial step in attempting to prevent the developmental disorder when they launch an $11.3 million study this week.

The findings, from a study conducted by researchers at the Universities of Bristol, Florence, and Western Australia, might help to explain some of the core social deficits associated with the disorder.

Autistic children are doubly stigmatized. On the one hand, they are often dismissed as “low functioning” or mentally retarded, especially if they have poor speaking skills as many do. Yet when autistics do show exceptional abilities—uncanny visual discrimination and memory for detail, for example—their flashes of brilliance are marginalized as aberrations, mere symptoms of their higher order cognitive deficit.

Autistic children have a capacity to understand other people through stereotypes, say scientists at UCL (University College London). The research shows that autistic children are just as able as others to predict people's behaviour when stereotypes, such as gender and race, are the only available guide.