Previous studies on social skills training on ASD were done almost exclusively in the West with children as the main subjects. Demonstrations of the applicability of social interventions in different cultures and age groups are warranted. The current study outlined the development and preliminary evaluation of a CBT-context-based social competence training for ASD (CBT-CSCA) developed in Hong Kong for Chinese adolescents with ASD. Twenty-five adolescents (aged 12-17 years, with a FSIQ above 80) were recruited. Significant improvements in social competence, autistic symptoms and general psychopathology at post-training and 3-month follow-up were reported by the parents. The study provided initial evidence support to the applicability of social competence training for adolescents with ASD in a different culture.
This study aimed to examine the sleep-dependent memory consolidation of verbal declarative memory in Chinese adolescents in a naturalistic experimental setting. Thirty-nine healthy boarding school students (ages 15-18, 70% female) were randomized to either a one-hour afternoon nap or wake group between the baseline and the retest sessions of three verbal declarative memory tasks: a Prose Stories Recall task, a Word Pair Associates task, and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. Results showed that the nap group performed better than the no-nap group on both the Prose Stories Recall task and the Word Pair Associates task, but not on list learning. Our findings suggest that napping is beneficial to verbal declarative memory in adolescents, providing ecologically-valid empirical support for the sleep-dependent memory consolidation hypothesis using a napping paradigm in participants' naturalistic habitat. Our results demonstrate the potential importance of napping as a practical mnemonic intervention/compensatory strategy for student populations.
Sleep-dependent memory consolidationPrevious studies suggest that sleep is important to a multiplicity of cognitive functioning, in particular learning and memory (Maquet, 2001). The 'sleep-dependent memory consolidation hypothesis' suggests that individuals remember more and forget less when offered a period of sleep over an equivalent period of wake (Stickgold, 2005). Findings supporting this hypothesis have been established for declarative (
The Hong Kong Chinese version of the Autism-Spectrum Quotient-Child and Autism-Spectrum Quotient-Adolescent were examined for their psychometric properties and specificity on screening autism spectrum disorder against attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This study recruited three groups of participants: typically developing children; children with autism spectrum disorder and children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Both the Autism-Spectrum Quotient questionnaires demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties in terms of internal consistency, test–retest reliability and area under receiver operating characteristics curve in discriminating the autism spectrum disorder group from the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and typically developing groups, separately and jointly. The optimal cutoff scores for both the Autism-Spectrum Quotient questionnaires were identified to be 76, with satisfactory sensitivity and specificity, for differentiating the autism spectrum disorder group from the typically developing group and from the typically developing and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder groups combined. On the contrary, both Autism-Spectrum Quotient questionnaires could not effectively differentiate the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder group from the typically developing group, or in other words, they did not misclassify attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder as autism spectrum disorder because of their phenotypic overlap in social difficulties. These findings supported that both the Autism-Spectrum Quotient questionnaires were not general measures of child and adolescent psychopathology, but could claim to be more specific measures of autism spectrum disorder, given their success in identifying the autism spectrum disorder group from the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder/typically developing groups, while failing to differentiate the latter two groups. Lay abstract The Autism-Spectrum Quotient is a 50-item questionnaire developed to assess autistic symptoms in adults, adolescents and children. Its original version and others in different countries are known to be effective tools in identifying individuals with autism spectrum disorder. This study examined whether the Hong Kong Chinese versions of the Autism-Spectrum Quotient-Child and Autism-Spectrum Quotient-Adolescent were effective in identifying autism spectrum disorder children and adolescents. On top of comparing them with their typically developing peers, this study also included a group of children/adolescents with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, a disorder with similar social difficulties as autism spectrum disorder. Results showed that both the Autism-Spectrum Quotient questionnaires were effective in differentiating the autism spectrum disorder group from the typically developing and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder groups, separately and jointly. On the contrary, they could not identify the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder group from the typically developing group so that they were not misclassifying attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder as autism spectrum disorder. These findings supported that both the Autism-Spectrum Quotient-Child and Autism-Spectrum Quotient-Adolescent were not general measures of child and adolescent psychopathology, but could claim to be specific measures of autism spectrum disorder. Such capability would enormously enhance their utility in clinical practice for identifying autism spectrum disorder children/adolescents from their typically developing peers and from those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This is because, the latter is a common neurodevelopmental disorder frequently presented to child psychiatric clinics alongside with autism spectrum disorder.
The current study aimed at testing and developing alternative short versions of autism spectrum quotient (AQ‐10) (adult [self‐report], adult [parent‐report], adolescent, and child versions) for use in Hong Kong. First, the various versions of AQ‐10 developed in the United Kingdom (the AQ‐10‐UK) were applied to Hong Kong Chinese samples and demonstrated satisfactory discriminative power (AUCs 0.77–0.94). Second, the Hong Kong Chinese versions of AQ‐10 (AQ‐10‐HK) were developed, using the same methodology as in the original UK study. There were some changes in the choice of items and cut‐offs. The AQ‐10‐HK demonstrated slightly greater discriminative power (AUCs 0.88–0.97) to that of the AQ‐10‐UK, but the differences in AUCs were not statistically significant. Compared to the corresponding full‐length versions, both the UK and HK short forms did not seem to lose any significant discriminative power. Yet, the various versions of AQ, be they the full‐length or AQ‐10, appeared to consistently exhibit slightly smaller AUCs with the Hong Kong Chinese samples than with the UK samples. So, this study found both cross‐cultural similarities and differences. The AQ‐10‐HK was recommended for local practice to maximize the advantage gained. Yet, for international multi‐site research collaboration, involving the UK and HK, the original AQ‐10‐UK can be used for direct comparison of data.
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