Autistic adults reported having special interests in a range of topics, including computers, music, autism, nature and gardening. Special interests were associated with a number of positive outcomes for autistic adults. They were also related to subjective wellbeing and satisfaction across specific life domains including social contact and leisure. Very high intensity of engagement with special interests was related to lower levels of wellbeing. This highlights the important role that special interests play in the lives of autistic adults.

This study highlights differences in cognitive strategies in children and adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorders (n = 52) on a verbal fluency task (naming as many words as possible (e.g. animals) within 60 s). The ability to form clusters of words (e.g. farm animals like "cow-horse-goat") or to switch between unrelated words (e.g. "snake" and "cat") was analyzed using a coding method that more stringently differentiates between these strategies. Results indicated that children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders switched less frequently, but produced slightly larger clusters than the comparison group, resulting in equal numbers of total words produced. The currently used measures of cognitive flexibility suggest atypical, but possibly equally efficient, fluency styles used by individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

Research has highlighted potential differences in the phenotypic and clinical presentation of autism spectrum conditions across sex. Furthermore, the measures utilised to evaluate autism spectrum conditions may be biased towards the male autism phenotype. It is important to determine whether these instruments measure the autism phenotype consistently in autistic men and women. This study evaluated the factor structure of the Autism Spectrum Quotient Short Form in a large sample of autistic adults. It also systematically explored specific sex differences at the item level, to determine whether the scale assesses the autism phenotype equivalently across males and females. Factor analyses were conducted among 265 males and 285 females. A two-factor structure consisting of a social behaviour and numbers and patterns factor was consistent across groups, indicating that the latent autism phenotype is similar among both autistic men and women. Subtle differences were observed on two social behaviour item thresholds of the Autism Spectrum Quotient Short Form, with women reporting scores more in line with the scores expected in autism on these items than men. However, these differences were not substantial. This study showed that the Autism Spectrum Quotient Short Form detects autistic traits equivalently in males and females and is not biased towards the male autism phenotype.

The empirical literature has presented inconsistent evidence for deficits in the recognition of basic emotion expressions in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which may be due to the focus on research with relatively small sample sizes. Additionally, it is proposed that although children with ASD may correctly identify emotion expression they rely on more deliberate, more time-consuming strategies in order to accurately recognize emotion expressions when compared to typically developing children. In the current study, we examine both emotion recognition accuracy and response time in a large sample of children, and explore the moderating influence of verbal ability on these findings. The sample consisted of 86 children with ASD (M age = 10.65) and 114 typically developing children (M age = 10.32) between 7 and 13 years of age. All children completed a pre-test (emotion word-word matching), and test phase consisting of basic emotion recognition, whereby they were required to match a target emotion expression to the correct emotion word; accuracy and response time were recorded. Verbal IQ was controlled for in the analyses. We found no evidence of a systematic deficit in emotion recognition accuracy or response time for children with ASD, controlling for verbal ability. However, when controlling for children's accuracy in word-word matching, children with ASD had significantly lower emotion recognition accuracy when compared to typically developing children. The findings suggest that the social impairments observed in children with ASD are not the result of marked deficits in basic emotion recognition accuracy or longer response times. However, children with ASD may be relying on other perceptual skills (such as advanced word-word matching) to complete emotion recognition tasks at a similar level as typically developing children.