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News & Events

Andrew Whitehouse has been listed in the WA Business News 40 under 40 awards recognising accomplished and dynamic young leaders in Western Australia.

News & Events

Hormone levels in the womb may determine how masculine or feminine your facial features are as an adult, The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers have found.

News & Events

Five The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers working across diverse and highly impactful areas of child health research have been named as finalists for the 2023 Premier’s Science Awards.

Research

Autism spectrum disorders are complex, with a strong genetic basis. Genetic research in autism spectrum disorders is limited by the fact that these disorders are largely heterogeneous so that patients are variable in their clinical presentations. To address this limitation, we investigated the genetics of individual dimensions of the autism spectrum disorder phenotypes, or autistic-like traits. These autistic-like traits are continuous variations in autistic behaviours that occur in the general population.

Research

Several studies have explored relationships between parent broader autism phenotype and offspring communication, and have reported that autistic-like traits in parents are related to offspring communication difficulties and autism severity. However, past research has focused on studying such associations in childhood and we know very little about them in infancy. With accumulating evidence that interventions administered during infancy may be most effective in reducing ASD symptoms, it is imperative to examine whether relationships between parent autistic-like traits and child communication appear even earlier during this critical period of life.

Research

Many clinicians in New Zealand do not follow guidelines for best practice in autism diagnosis. In this study, we investigated the processes that health professionals in New Zealand follow when diagnosing autistic children and adults. We asked 117 health professionals from a range of services and regions in New Zealand, how they identify and diagnose autism.

Research

To investigate associations between functioning, community participation, and quality of life (QoL) and identify whether participation mediates the effects of functioning on QoL.

Research

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition whose biological basis is yet to be elucidated. The Australian Autism Biobank (AAB) is an initiative of the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC) to establish an Australian resource of biospecimens, phenotypes and genomic data for research on autism.

Research

There are no well-established biomedical treatments for the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A small number of studies suggest that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, may improve clinical and cognitive outcomes in ASD.

Research

Child temperament and caregiver psychological distress have been independently associated with social-emotional difficulties among individuals with autism. However, the interrelationship among these risk factors has rarely been investigated.