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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a condition that is characterized by failures in social behavior and repetitive behaviors. The neuropsychological profile shows heterogeneous findings that depends on the severity of the disorder. The objective of this paper is to describe the neuropsychological functioning of a sample of children with ASD who attend the Institute for the Integral Development of Children with Autism (DINA). The sample consisted of 78 participants, 15.4 % female and 84.6 % male, aged between 6 and 16 years. The instruments used were the neuropsychological protocol adapted from the ENI, intelligence apportionment from the WISC-IV, Sally and Ann Test, Facial Expressions Test adapted by Paul Ekman and Reading the Mind in the Eye for children, Faux Pas Test, and The Happé's Strange Stories test. The results are discussed considering the scientific literature on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) usually develop interest in areas that is unusual in its intensity or focus. This paper focuses on the influence of the special interest areas in the problem solving processes of multiplication and division word arithmetic problems, through a single case study with an 11-year-old student diagnosed with ASD and intellectual disability. A questionnaire consisting of 15 problems contextualized in three types of contexts -special interest context, a familiar context and an unfamiliar context-was applied. Following a qualitative method, informal strategies and success in obtaining the solution were registered. The results show that both, the special interest context and the familiar context, determined the success in obtaining the problem solution; the student did not solved any problem in the unfamiliar context; the special interest context led to a greater involvement of the student in the search of the solution, but it did not represent an effective improvement with respect to familiar contexts, since in both contexts the student solved the multiplication and division-grouping problems, but did not solve the partitive-division problems. These findings contribute to completing the existing literature on the educational potential of special interest areas in students diagnosed with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in communication and social interaction as well as restrictive and repetitive behavior. It has high comorbidity with other disorders, reaching 37% with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in young patients. OCD is characterized by recurrent thoughts and ideas that lead the person to perform compulsive actions to reduce the level of anxiety generated by these thoughts. This paper presents a review of the psychological intervention methods, as well as their effectiveness, used to reduce the symptoms of comorbid OCD in people with ASD. It includes 14 articles in which cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure and prevention of responses (EPR) showed encouraging results in reducing these symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]