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If there’s one thing modern researchers and health professionals now understand, it’s that for so many diseases and conditions affecting children and adolescents, early intervention is crucial.
Mother-infant interactions during the first year of life are crucial to healthy infant development. The infant-directed speech (IDS), and specifically pitch contours, used by mothers during interactions are associated with infant language and social development.
Early parent-child interactions have a critical impact on the developmental outcomes of the child. It has been reported that infants with a family history of autism and their parents may engage in different patterns of behaviours during interaction compared to those without a family history of autism. This study investigated the association of parent-child interactions with child developmental outcomes of those with typical and elevated likelihood of autism.
Researchers have shown that the so called 'autism epidemic' is due to an increase in the diagnosis of children with less severe behavioural symptoms.
Deputy Director (Research); Angela Wright Bennett Professor of Autism Research at The Kids Research Institute Australia; Director, CliniKids
Past research has highlighted the importance of early identification of developmental differences to improve targeted access to early interventions or supports. As such, it is of particular importance in the context of children at elevated likelihood of autism (such as where an older sibling has a diagnosis of autism), to better understand when and which early concerns are important as predictors of which children will benefit from pre-diagnostic supports.
The identification of reproducible subtypes within autistic populations is a priority research area in the context of neurodevelopment, to pave the way for identification of biomarkers and targeted treatment recommendations. Few previous studies have considered medical comorbidity alongside behavioural, cognitive, and psychiatric data in subgrouping analyses.
The Kids Research Institute Australia autism researcher Professor Andrew Whitehouse has been inducted as a Fellow to the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR), making him just the fourth Australian to be bestowed the honour.
A child-led therapy that supports the social development of babies showing early signs of autism has found a significant reduction in social communication difficulties in babies who received the therapy, according to new research led by CliniKids at The Kids Research Institute Australia.
CliniKids has won the Excellence in Allied Health category at the inaugural National Disability Awards, announced in Melbourne tonight.