Autism overdiagnosis "can harmfully divert resources from children with greater needs, marginalize those with autism already at the periphery of our societies, and reshape the way children develop in ways that stunt natural resilience and growth"? jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... viewpoint

For autistics, it's all over by age 5 ("well past the time for best outcomes")? "strong evidence shows that early behavioral intervention can significantly improve outcomes & quality of life"?--no, benefits vs harms have not been fairly tested jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... viewpoint with epic COIs

In autistics "persistent, clinically elevated EF challenges regardless of their cognitive ability"? "Flexibility difficulties predict mental health challenges across anxiety, depression, & aggression"? acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... but--parent-report only & BRIEF is bad for autistics

What terms do autistic & other neurodivergent adults prefer? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... "at the heart of it, terminology discussions, particularly in an academic setting, are not about language at all, but the lingering dehumanisation of people considered ‘disordered’ or ‘abnormal’"

On the block design task, "certain strategies—particularly analytic and synthetic approaches—are associated with greater performance" & "autistic individuals tend to adopt these effective strategies more consistently than neurotypical participants" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... free

Registered: "Is there an association between autism and/or ADHD (diagnosed or high trait groups) and all-cause dementia?" "What factors mediate or moderate the association between autism/ADHD and dementia?" www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/vie... systematic review & meta-analysis

"the first ASSR study in autism... to incorporate an active auditory oddball task"? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... autistic (vs typical) children had "markedly poorer behavioral performance"?--autistics had similar % correct & detection sensitivity; but faster RTs & more false alarms

Autism researchers & service providers "often neglect to consider the potential for interventions to cause harm... and they communicate more confidence regarding the possibility of benefits for autistic people than is warranted given the evidence" journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... editorial, free

"COIs continue to be pervasive in ABA autism intervention research, and most remain undisclosed. Most alarmingly, the practice of falsely claiming not to hold COIs remains entrenched in this field of research and appears to have worsened over time" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... an update

Comparing how autistic vs non-autistic adults (age 40-90) approach & experience retirement, online survey, free journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... autistics were "less likely to have made retirement plans, and among those who had plans, they were more likely to have been disrupted or changed"

"a starting point for the development of new scholarship about ND musicians by ND musicians"? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... "when referring to forms of neurodivergence, we are only discussing innate neurological differences" as opposed to "acquired neurodivergence" ("e.g. depression")?

Autistics (vs non-autistics) "show more negative interoceptive evaluation"? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... "autistic traits predicted all three interoception measures (evaluation, accuracy and attention)" but "presence or absence of an autism diagnosis only predicted interoceptive evaluation"

"the effects of an AI-based intervention (Noora) on emotionally responsive verbal communication in autistic adults" (N=3)?--in which autistic responses "focused on problem-solving" are judged wrong, and subject to "corrective feedback"? link.springer.com/article/10.1... ABA in 2026, COIs, free

Daily living skills in "non- or minimally-speaking" ("NMS") autistic adults? link.springer.com/article/10.1... "the nonverbal reasoning skills of NMS individuals vary widely... it seems reasonable that independence in daily living skills amongst NMS autistic adults would also vary widely"

Authors "found more differences than we expected between autism and BPD. The differences we found were apparent despite including individuals with subclinical traits of the comparator diagnosis, and aligned with each diagnostic construct" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... free

"Reporting of RCT abstracts remains incomplete particularly for key items including trial design, random sequence generation, blinding, and funding source disclosure" "Targeted interventions for authors, editors and reviewers are needed..." link.springer.com/article/10.1... autism-relevant, free

"research is urgently required to address the driving barriers and challenges faced by autistic people"? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... "challenges... often relate to societal barriers or negative experiences, rather than due to any proven differences in driving safety or performance"

SRS-2 for autistic adults?--self & informant reports had low concordance & "did not map well with clinician’s impressions" link.springer.com/article/10.1... & "no evidence to suggest that autistic individuals found difficulty in responding to SRS-2 items which require them to hold insight..."?

2 new copyrighted measures dictating what autistics should do in research, and how?--a lot of autistic contributions (e.g. mine) get graded poorly, disparaged as non-meaningful, non-genuine, etc journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... authors gave "paid guest lectures" on this & declare no COIs?

Registered: "In studies of the predictive coding theory of autism, are group differences reduced by unexpected vs expected uncertainty"? www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/vie... systematic review, aiming "to clarify the predictive coding theory of autism through signalled and un-signalled uncertainty"

"a significantly elevated amplitude of hand flapping in autistic toddlers relative to non-autistic toddlers" but "no group differences emerged in the frequency of repetitive hand flapping"? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... "findings highlight the variability of repetitive hand flapping"

Constructing & implementing "the PBIS-Residential setting for Autistic Adults"?--PBIS means ABA all the time everywhere journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... all done and reported with zero input from the autistic adult residents & zero autistic input of any kind at any time (have I got that right)

"we caution against the assumption that all autistic people camouflage" "camouflaging is not specific nor unique to autistic people" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... "there is little evidence to suggest camouflaging should be included in the diagnostic criteria for an autism diagnosis"

Catatonia in autism & NDDs--"the evidence base remains methodologically immature and rooted largely in case reports, series, and observational studies" sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "Differentiating catatonia from core autistic features remains one of the field’s greatest challenges"?

In students with "extensive support needs" (most are autistic), Wechsler IQ ranges up to 115? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... "extensive support needs" means "eligible for the Alternate Assessment for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities" and/or adaptive behavior scores under 76?

Reported DSM-5 autism "severity" levels for autistics aged 4 & 8?--across 11 US states, reported prevalence of level 3 "severity" (i.e. "most severe") ranged from 7.5% to 53.8%? link.springer.com/article/10.1... "The degree to which autistic people find utility in the severity levels is unclear"?

Registered: "Understanding the changing needs of autistic children in speech and language therapy services: exploring children’s priorities and preferences alongside current practice" www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN11768137 3-phase study including autistics aged 9-17 & SLTs (speech and language therapists)

For N=64 autistic children at kindergarten entry, parent-reported (CBCL) emotion dysregulation "severity levels"? N=44 (68.8%) had "typical" levels, N=16 (25%) had "moderate" levels, N=4 (6.2%) had "severe" levels? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... study without any comparison group, free

In autistic children, "autism-related approach–withdrawal behaviors"?--"a community detection algorithm revealed four 'communities' of behaviors: preference for predictability, sensory features, social communication, and dysregulated negative affect"? link.springer.com/article/10.1... free

In N=2722 autistics aged 16-79 years (mean 40.5), age at diagnosis ranged from 0.7 to 75.5 years (mean 35.6) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... "gender identity was not a significant predictor of diagnostic delay" (i.e. "delays between the initial suspicion of autism and formal diagnosis")

Against the "needs-led approach" of support without diagnosis for autism, ADHD, etc--"at the likely cost of... creating a generation of neurodivergent children and adults who are more distressed, more excluded, less understood, and more unequal"? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... commentary

Mood & anxiety measures adapted for autistic adults, systematic review link.springer.com/article/10.1... of 32 studies, only 1 "included autistic individuals in the adaptation process"?--but this is "not accounting for studies authored by autistic researchers who did not explicitly indicate as such"

"The Autistic SPACE framework was initially developed to improve health care for autistic people" & is now being promoted as "improving school environments for autistic young people" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... note: the benefits vs harms of Autistic SPACE have not yet been tested

Registered: autistics' experiences of monotropism, including "benefits (e.g. enjoyment, meaning, emotional regulation, learning or wellbeing)" & "challenges (e.g. attentional inertia, difficulty shifting focus, distress or burnout)" www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/vie... qualitative meta-synthesis

Of N=630 autistic adults, N=261 "had a documented history of genetic testing"? & of N=238 where testing method was recorded, N=129 "had testing using a recommended method"? & N=34 had "any positive results" using "any recommended method"? link.springer.com/article/10.1... retrospective chart review

The spontaneous vocabulary of autistic preschoolers who have limited language, vs existing lists of early vocabulary (e.g. MCDI)? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... autistics "used a variety of words tied to their personal interests and social contexts that were not captured by these lists"

"across three studies, we observed no significant differences in visual working memory performance between aphantasics and typical imagers, even when we took steps intended to make the tasks more challenging and sensitive" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... autism-relevant

ABA preference assessments do not help autistics, again link.springer.com/article/10.1... e.g. one autistic "engaged in incompatible behaviors (i.e., loud vocalizations, falling to floor, walking to door)" & one autistic's preferences are dismissed as biased & "not presented in the graphs"

In autistics aged 2-6 years, PRT "regardless of intensity, was not significantly associated with improvements in any domain of child QoL (physical, emotional, social, or school) compared to treatment as usual" link.springer.com/article/10.1... note: PRT is an NDBI, which means it is ABA-based

Research note: Kanner's original N=11 autistics had extremely heterogeneous later outcomes, as generally did the autistics he reported on, as generally did diagnosed autistics in the literature before the "spectrum" became a thing (just a brief reminder, in case anyone's forgotten)

Combining autism & ADHD to make yet more new subgroups? link.springer.com/article/10.1... "ADHD with reduced social communication and RRBI symptoms" "ASD/ADHD with moderate social communication and RRBI symptoms" "ASD with moderate symptoms in all domains" "ASD with high symptoms in all domains"?

Registered: "Developing and applying new autistic-led standards for social care environments: a participatory action research study of Ethical Quality Autistic Led Support" www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN12256307 "The project will make new tools to help care services provide better care for autistic people"

"autistic youth had weaker grip strength and more difficulty with motor skills compared to non-autistic peers, with the gap in strength widening in adolescence and the gap in overall motor ability remaining the same or narrowing"? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... data from age 6 to 18, free

Survey results "challenged traditional intrapersonal and pathologising accounts of autistic suicidality... conceptualising this instead in response to systemic injustices, requiring coordinated, preventative and multisector responses to make lives worth living" sciencedirect.com/science/arti... free

Among autistic and/or ADHD and dyslexic adults, "preferences, offensiveness, acceptability, and self-use of six neurodiversity-related terms"?--UK & US survey, free journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... "neurominority was the least preferred and considered the most offensive of all presented terms"

Autistics (N=17) on ageing journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... e.g. an autistic aged 46 on Parkinson's: "I have traits in common with Parkinson’s already... But it also might be that they don’t really have Parkinson’s, it’s just what autistic people look like when they get old. I’d like to know"

On data sharing in autism, which may "exacerbate irresponsible or biased interpretation of data" leading to "promotion of interventions damaging to the autistic community" & "greater misunderstanding of autism" & "deterioration in the QoL of autistic people" journals.plos.org/digitalhealt... review

Registered: aiming to "integrate and synthesise the available research evidence on the perspectives, experiences, and priorities of late-diagnosed autistic adults concerning post-diagnostic support" www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/vie... integrative review, in which "late-diagnosed" means after age 25

See behavior analysts being alarmed about ABA "falling prey to uncontrolled mentalism"--"That tendency toward default mentalism also risks minimizing the distinction between ABA and its competition in the marketplace of treatment models" link.springer.com/article/10.1... ABA in 2026, autism-relevant

Interviews with autistics about autistic burnout, free journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... many participants "shared a sense of self-blame as a result of ability loss & difficulty with functioning at least partially connected to burnout. Some participants seemed to experience very severe distress"