Faculty Bibliography

The study of comorbid psychopathology among persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is picking up steam. The purpose of this paper was to review and describe important characteristics of existing studies. Among the current crop of papers, depression, anxiety, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been frequently evaluated. Groups studied have most frequently been children. Persons with ASD and normal intelligence quotient (IQ) scores have been studied more often than individuals with ASD and intellectual disability. Additional characteristics are discussed, and the implications of these data for future developments in the field are reviewed.

The current study examined the relationship between ethnicity and the age at which parents first become concerned about their children's development in 1478 toddlers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and atypical development. Based on the current findings, there were no racial/ethnic differences in age of parent's first concerns. Caregivers of toddlers with ASD first developed concerns around the same time independent of which ethnic groups they belong to. In addition, the age of caregivers' first concerns was significantly younger for those with ASD compared to those who are atypically developing without an ASD diagnosis. Implications regarding these findings are discussed. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Individuals with ASD often demonstrate elevated rates of challenging behaviors, such as tantrums, aggression, and property destruction. The current study examined the relationship between cognitive abilities and conduct problem behaviors in 263 children aged 18 to 39 months. Cognitive development was measured utilizing the cognitive developmental quotient (DQ) on the Battelle Developmental Inventory, Second Edition (BDI-2). Participants were separated into two groups: (1) low cognitive DQgroup (cognitive DQ less than or equal to 70), and (2) typical cognitive DQgroup (cognitive DQgreater than 70). Conduct problems were assessed using the Tantrum/Conduct Behavior subscale of the Baby and Infant Screen for Children with aUtIsm Traits, Part 2 (BISCUIT-Part 2). Higher rates of overall conduct problem behaviors were observed in young children with ASD and typical cognitive development relative to children with low cognitive development. Comparisons of specific conduct behaviors indicated cognitive ability may be associated with particular presentations of conduct problems. Implications are discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a lifelong neurodevelopment disorder that affects individuals of all ages. Currently, the majority of autism research is focused on children and adolescents. Although this trend has been a norm, there has not been research showing this pattern. The current review aimed to systematically review autism research in the past 20 years to determine who is being studied. The results of this review revealed that 94% of the reviewed studies (n = 2688) included younger population (infants, toddlers, children, and adolescents). Implications regarding these findings are discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Research is limited in examining the presence of comorbid symptoms in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and co-occurring intellectual disability (ID). The current study aimed to expand knowledge in this area by evaluating the presence of comorbid symptoms in children and adolescents with ASD, compared to those with ASD and ID. Comorbid symptoms examined using the Autism Spectrum Disorders-Comorbidity for Children (ASD-C-C) included tantrum behavior, repetitive behavior, worry/depression, avoidant behavior, under-eating, conduct problems, and over-eating. Two hundred and nineteen children and adolescents ranging from 3 to 16 years of age participated in the study. Significant differences were not found between the groups on any of the comorbid symptoms measured. The implications of these findings on treatment are discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Adolescent overweight/obesity (OW/O) has reached epidemic proportions. The Youth Self-Report (YSR) was administered to 514 primarily Hispanic urban high school students to examine the relationship between weight and psychological distress. YSR and study population-specific norms were used to assess risk on Anxious/Depressed, Withdrawn/Depressed, Somatic Complaints, and Social Problems scales. OW/O status increased Social Problems regardless of norms. OW/O students endorsed greater Withdrawn/Depressed symptoms with YSR norms; greater Anxious/Depressed and Somatic Complaints were endorsed with population-specific norms. Females drive results. Findings suggest norms need to incorporate minority and economically disadvantaged groups.

Early detection and treatment of psychiatric disorders on children has shown significant impact in their subsequent development and quality of life. The assessment of psychopathology in childhood is commonly carried out by performing long comprehensive interviews such as the widely used Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA). Unfortunately, the time required to complete a full interview is too long to apply it at the scale of the actual population at risk, and most of the population goes undiagnosed or is diagnosed significantly later than desired. In this work, we aim to learn from unique and very rich previously collected PAPA examples the inter-correlations between different questions in order to provide a reliable risk analysis in the form of a much shorter interview. This helps to put such important risk analysis at the hands of regular practitioners, including teachers and family doctors. We use for this purpose the alternating decision trees algorithm, which combines decision trees with boosting to produce small and interpretable decision rules. Rather than a binary prediction, the algorithm provides a measure of confidence in the classification outcome. This is highly desirable from a clinical perspective, where it is preferable to abstain a decision on the low-confidence cases and recommend further screening. In order to prevent over-fitting, we propose to use network inference analysis to predefine a set of candidate question with consistent high correlation with the diagnosis. We report encouraging results with high levels of prediction using two independently collected datasets. The length and accuracy of the developed method suggests that it could be a valuable tool for preliminary evaluation in everyday care.