Fifteen children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and twenty-one children without ASD completed six perceptual tasks designed to characterize the nature of the audiovisual processing difficulties experienced by children with ASD. Children with ASD scored significantly lower than children without ASD on audiovisual tasks involving human faces and voices, but scored similarly to children without ASD on audiovisual tasks involving nonhuman stimuli (bouncing balls). Results suggest that children with ASD may use visual information for speech differently from children without ASD. Exploratory results support an inverse association between audiovisual speech processing capacities and social impairment in children with ASD.

Toddlers may be at particularly high risk for a number of psychiatric, developmental and neurobiological consequences in the aftermath of trauma. The social and emotional impact of potentially traumatic life events experienced between 6 and 36-months of age was assessed in an epidemiological birth cohort of 18- to 36-month-olds from the Greater New Haven Area. Event-exposed toddlers evidenced greater symptom severity on the ITSEA Internalizing, Externalizing, Dysregulation, Atypical and Maladaptive scales, as well on the CBCL Internalizing and Externalizing scales than those not exposed. Approximately one-fifth of event-exposed toddlers were reported by their parents to have experienced a dramatic change in functioning following the event, and were described as experiencing higher levels of symptoms consistent with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), namely re-experiencing and arousal, than exposed toddlers whose parents did not report a change in their functioning. Implications for clinicians and child care providers working with toddlers and their parents are discussed.

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