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Background: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have social communication difficulties and restricted, repetitive, and/or sensory behaviors or interests. The prevalence of ASD is now 1 in 36 individuals. Parents of individuals with ASD face challenges that can affect their physical and psychological well-being. Objective: With the long-term goal to tailor an exercise program, the purpose of this study was 2-fold: (1) establish the baseline physical and mental health of parents of individuals with ASD and (2) estimate the relationship of physiologic variables with psychological variables of health for parents of individuals with ASD. Methods: This descriptive, cross-sectional study (N = 44) explored physical health measures and the correlation between physical and psychological health, using measures of anxiety, stress, parenting depression, and positive thinking for parents who care for individuals with ASD. Results: The common characteristics that these parents shared was high body fat and low physical activity. Body fat was negatively correlated to total step count (r = −0.428, P <.05), grip strength (r = −0.319, P <.5), and total distance walked in the week (r = −0.661, P <.01), and positively correlated to 5-times sit to stand (r = 0.337, P <.05). Low activity correlated to increased parenting stress of advocating for child's needs (r = −0.310, P =.043). Conclusions: Understanding relationships between physical and psychological health informs effective interventions and support systems for parents. Parents need supports to be able to prioritize exercise. Future studies should include a larger sample to verify these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism is associated with genomic instability, which is regulated by telomere length (TL) and index of global methylation (LINE-1). This study will determine relative TL (RTL) and LINE-1 methylation percentage for 69 patients and 33 control subjects to evaluate their potential role as biomarkers for autism. The results displayed a significant decrease of both RTL and LINE-1 methylation in autistic cases relative to controls (P < 0.001). Analysis of receiver operating characteristics curve revealed that both of RTL and LINE-1 methylation percentage have the ability to serve as autism biomarkers (area under the curve = 0.817 and 0.889, respectively). The statistical analysis revealed positive correlation between the two biomarkers (correlation coefficient = 0.439 and P < 0.001). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to examine the motor skill levels of children aged 3-6 years with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in comparison with their typically developing (TD) peers and to reveal their needs for motor support programs. The research group consisted of 88 participants aged 3-6 years, including 43 children (40 boys and 3 girls) diagnosed with ASD attending special education and rehabilitation institutions, and 45 TD children (23 boys and 22 girls) receiving pre-school education in a private institution (ASD=57.4 months, ±9.32 - TD=59.06 months, ±8.61). The Peabody Developmental Motor Scale-2 (PDMS-2) and the Turkish Version of the Gilliam Autism Rating Scale-2 (GARS-2-TV) were used as data-collection tools in the study. The Mann-Whitney U test was used for the two-group comparisons of the parameters that did not exhibit normal distribution in the analysis of the data. The Spearman correlation analysis was applied to determine the relationship between the variables. The significance was evaluated at the p<0.05 level. As a result of the research, the balance, locomotor and manipulative skills and total gross motor scores of the children with ASD were found to be lower than those of the TD children (p<0.05). In addition, it was observed that there was a significant correlation between GARS-2-TV scores and PDMS-2 scores of the children with ASD (p<0.05). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Williams syndrome (WS) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are associated with atypical social-emotional functioning. Affective visual stimuli were used to assess autonomic reactivity and emotion identification, and the social responsiveness scale was used to determine the level social functioning in children with WS and ASD contrasted with typical development (TD), to examine syndrome-specific and syndrome-general features. Children with ASD exhibited the highest arousal in response to faces, with a lack of difference in autonomic sensitivity across different emotional expressions, unlike in WS and TD. The WS group demonstrated unique deficits in identifying neutral stimuli. While autonomic responsivity to neutral faces was associated with social functioning in all children, converging profiles characterized children with WS contrasted with TD and ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the barriers faced by individuals with disabilities result from negative attitudes of individuals without disabilities from the general public. Thus, therapeutic recreation programs in the community are an ideal setting to foster interaction between individuals with and without disabilities through integrated services, which can reduce negative attitudes toward individuals with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to describe the factors that motivate individuals to volunteer for therapeutic recreation programs and to evaluate how the volunteer experience affected the volunteer's comfort level and attitudes toward individuals with disabilities. Using quantitative scales, volunteers were surveyed before and after exposure to therapeutic recreation programs. Data analyses demonstrated that baseline comfort levels of volunteers toward individuals with disabilities were high. There was a statistically significant increase in comfort levels toward individuals with disabilities after exposure to therapeutic recreation programs among volunteers with lower baseline comfort levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents research which focused on the development of a comprehensive social skills taxonomy to assess the social abilities of children. Topics covered include the different diagnostic categories assigned by researchers as well as the analysis of the social skills of children based on the models used by occupational therapy practitioners. Also mentioned is the educational progress among pediatric patients.