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Can you say strengths and deficits at the same time?

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People tend to go towards a “strengths only” or “weaknesses only” approach to describing autism. But even if you think about a single aspect of autistic challenges – social communication – autistics can show both. How can you measure this, and even more importantly, document it to play to someones strengths while addressing their impairments at the same time? Special guests Dr. Matthew Lerner and Jacquelyn Gates from Stony Brook University explain how this can be done by clinicians.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36573397/

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Passing as Non-Autistic

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You may know this as “masking” or “camouflaging” where autistic adults intentionally or unintentionally hide their autistic features to pass as non-autistic because they want to hide some of their challenges. This week, Drs. Erin Libsack and Matthew Lerner from Stony Brook University summarize a systematic review on this behavior. The original goal was to develop their own studies, but as it turns out, there are still so many unanswered questions to deal with that were unearthed from this systematic review.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34505231/

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Putting the pieces together around group social skills interventions

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Individual research studies are great.  But even better is when someone takes these studies and puts them together to see if one study shows the same thing another does, and if they do is the effect size consistent?  Sometimes you can only do this by going old school and pooling the data from the individual studies.   This is especially helpful in determining the effectiveness of different interventions.  This week, Dr. Matthew Lerner and his colleagues at Stony Brook University  published a meta analysis of group social skills interventions.  They put together well-designed studies and asked:  do they work?  Are they better than getting nothing at all?  To find out, listen to this week’s ASF podcast.