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Contextual Factors in Autism: What took us so long?

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Contextual factors, or external factors, are environmental influences and can impact not just a diagnosis but the life course of a person with autism and their families. A recent commentary by autism researchers around the world highlights the importance of these factors and provides resources on how they can be collected in a rigorous, but accessible, way. Dr. Marsha Mailick, lead author of the commentary, discusses the definition of contextual factors, why they are important, and how they can influence development. Read the commentary – open access – here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.3312

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New ways to solve old problems

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This week’s podcast focuses on innovative methodologies to understand how to reach black families, understand why and when autistic people prefer not to look at faces and how interventions can improve conversation and social communication. They use culturally and racially matched mentors, old home video tapes (keep taking those!) and machine learning to look not just at novel methods but novel ways of studying a particular outcome.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35232271/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35228613/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35229983/

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How to read scientific literature

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This week, ASF intern Priyanka Shah provides an 8 minute tutorial on the reading and interpretation of scientific literature.  It’s worth the listen.  It goes over what to pull from an abstract, what the different sections tell you about the study, where to get the paper if you can’t find it, and what are the most important parts.  Here are some additional resources:

Resources on finding papers:
Google Scholar: scholar.google.com