Social Skills

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that the naturally-occurring hormone oxytocin selectively improves social cognitive abilities for less socially proficient individuals, but has little effect on those who are more socially proficient. While more research is required, these results highlight the potential oxytocin holds for treating social deficits in people with disorders marked by deficits in social functioning like autism.

Seaside Therapeutics reported findings on STX209 at the 42nd Autism Society National Conference. STX209 is a selective gamma-amino butyric acid type B (GABA-B) receptor agonist being studied for the treatment of ASD and fragile X syndrome (FXS).

As previously reported, STX209 demonstrated statistically significant improvements across a number of global and specific neurobehavioral outcomes in the open-label Phase 2a study, including significant improvements in social impairment—a core symptom of ASD.

Kennedy Krieger Institute have announced new study results showing an early marker for later communication and social delays in infants at a higher-risk for autism may be infrequent gazing at other people when unprompted. The study also found that six-month-old high-risk infants demonstrated the same level of cause and effect learning skills when compared to low-risk infants of the same age.

Training parents to adapt communication to their child's impairments doesn't affect the child's autism but does help the parent-child relationship, U.K. researchers find. The idea was that training parents to respond to their child's specific communication needs would jump-start the child's social development and improve the child's general communication skills.

Results of a randomized clinical trial found an innovative multi-component summer social development program to be effective in improving the social performance of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders.