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Neurodiverse brainsNeurodiversity awareness is about raising understanding that there are many different ways that people think, learn, process and interact with the world.

News & Events
Congratulations Andrew!Congratulations to CliniKids Director Professor Andrew Whitehouse on his recent nomination for WA's Australian of the Year Award.
Research
The valence-specific empathy imbalance hypothesis of autism: The role of autistic traits, alexithymia, emotion dysregulation, and gender differencesIndividuals exhibiting pronounced autistic traits (e.g., social differences and specialised interests) may struggle with cognitive empathy (i.e., the ability to infer others' emotions), although the relationship with affective empathy (i.e., the ability to share others' emotions) is less clear in that higher levels of autistic traits may be linked with increased affective empathy for negative emotions but reduced affective empathy for positive emotions. The current study investigates this empathy profile and whether alexithymia and emotion dysregulation help to explain it.
Research
Investigating the impact of developmental coordination difficulties across home, school, and community settings: Findings from the Australian Impact for DCD surveyTo evaluate the participation difficulties experienced by children with developmental coordination disorder in home, school, and community environments.
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Parental perspectives of the everyday experiences of uncertainty among young children on the autism spectrumAnxiety commonly co-occurs in autism. Exploring and understanding potential underpinning mechanisms contributing to and maintaining anxiety in the early years is important in managing anxiety. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU), a tendency to find uncertainty difficult, is a transdiagnostic mechanism contributing to anxiety, but little is known about how IU may be experienced in young children on the autism spectrum. This study investigated parental perspectives of children's experiences of uncertainty.
Research
Support Preferences and Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) in the Clinical Care of Autistic Children: Stakeholder PerspectivesClinical decision support systems (CDSS) are increasingly utilised within healthcare settings to enhance decision making. However, few studies have investigated their application in the context of clinical services for autistic people, with no research to date exploring the perspectives of the key stakeholders who are, or in the future may be, impacted by their use.
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Mode of delivery and behavioral and neuropsychological outcomes in children at 10 years of agePrevious studies have reported that mode of delivery, particularly cesarean delivery is associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes in children. This study evaluates behavioral and neuropsychological test scores in children based on mode of delivery.
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Utilising Behavioural and Sensory Profiles and Associated Perinatal Factors to Identify Meaningful Subgroups in Autism Spectrum DisorderThe heterogeneity of autism spectrum disorder clinically and aetiologically hinders intervention matching and prediction of outcomes. This study investigated if the behavioural, sensory, and perinatal factor profiles of autistic children could be used to identify distinct subgroups. Participants on the autism spectrum aged 2 to 17 years and their families were sourced via the Australian Autism Biobank.

News & Events
World-first Inklings Program launches in South AustraliaSouth Australian families with babies showing early social and communication differences will be among the first to benefit from a nation-leading early support program, as The Kids Research Institute Australia’s Inklings Program officially launches in South Australia.
Research
Continuity of temperament subgroup classifications from infancy to toddlerhood in the context of early autism traitsOur previous cross-sectional investigation (Chetcuti et al., 2020) showed that infants with autism traits could be divided into distinct subgroups based on temperament. This longitudinal study builds on this existing work by exploring the continuity of temperament subgroup classifications and their associations with behavioral/clinical phenotypic features from infancy to toddlerhood.