ArticleMolecular autism2024
Investigating frank autism: clinician initial impressions and autism characteristics.
Article in Molecular autism, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Symptoms of Oppositional Behavior In autistic Adolescents and Adolescents Who Have Lost the Autism diagnosis.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2026Article
- Abstention and Threshold Identification for Uncertainty Management in Clinical Decision Tools: A Case Study using Human-In-The-Loop Pediatric Autism Classifiers.Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing. Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing · 2026Article
- Associations between pragmatic language and Theory of Mind in individuals with a history of autism and those who have lost the autism diagnosis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Sensory-movement underpinnings of lifelong neurodivergence: getting a grip on autism.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2025Article
- The Autism Constellation and Neurodiversity: Long-Term and Adult Outcomes in Autism Spectrum Disorder.Pediatric clinics of North America · 2024Review
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
background"Frank autism," recognizable through the first minutes of an interaction, describes a behavioral presentation of a subset of autistic individuals that is closely tied to social communication challenges, and may be linked to so-called "prototypical autism." To date, there is no research on frank autism presentations of autistic adolescents and young adults, nor individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in childhood who do not meet diagnostic criteria during or after adolescence (loss of autism diagnosis, LAD). In addition, there are currently no data on the factors that drive frank autism impressions in these adolescent groups.
methodsThis study quantifies initial impressions of autistic characteristics in 24 autistic, 24 LAD and 26 neurotypical (NT) individuals ages 12 to 39 years. Graduate student and expert clinicians completed five-minute impressions, rated confidence in their own impressions, and scored the atypicality of behaviors associated with impressions; impressions were compared with current gold-standard diagnostic outcomes.
resultsOverall, clinicians' impressions within the first five minutes generally matched current gold-standard diagnostic status (clinical best estimate), were highly correlated with ADOS-2 CSS, and were driven primarily by prosodic and facial cues. However, this brief observation did not detect autism in all cases. While clinicians noted some subclinical atypicalities in the LAD group, impressions of the LAD and NT groups were similar. LIMITATIONS: The brief observations in this study were conducted during clinical research, including some semi-structured assessments. While results suggest overall concordance between initial impressions and diagnoses following more thorough evaluation, findings may not generalize to less structured, informal contexts. In addition, our sample was demographically homogeneous and comprised only speaking autistic participants. They were also unmatched for sex, with more females in the non-autistic group. Future studies should recruit samples that are diverse in demographic variables and ability level to replicate these findings and explore their implications.
conclusionsResults provide insights into the behavioral characteristics that contribute to the diagnosis of adolescents and young adults and may help inform diagnostic decision making in the wake of an increase in the demand for autism evaluations later than childhood. They also substantiate claims of an absence of apparent autistic characteristics in individuals who have lost the diagnosis.
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