Australasian Society for Autism Research

2024 INSAR Annual Meeting in Melbourne 15-18 May

INSAR 2024 - 15-18 May
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Margot Prior Awards – application submission deadline Tue 7th Nov 2023

Application submission deadline Tue 7th Nov 2023 - Enter Now!
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ASfAR Conference 6-7 December 2023

University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. More details and call fo...
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Margot Prior Awards 2022

Margot Prior Award Winners Announced...
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INSAR Summer Institute 2018: Stakeholder Perspectives and Participation: Building Successful Collaborations for Research

11 July 2018
Categories: Past Events

The International Society for Autism Research is hosting a free series of six online seminars, focusing on issues related to stakeholder perspectives and participation.

SEMINAR 5
July 12 2018
Stakeholder Participation at the Systems Level

Presenters:
Geraldine Dawson, John Robison, Dena Gassner

Working Group Leader:
Melissa Maye

 Geraldine Dawson John Robison Dena Gassner
View session details / materials online
 SEMINAR 6 –
July 24 2018		 Community-Academic Partnerships in Implementation Research
Presenters: David Mandell, Melanie Pellachia, Jill Locke & Michelle Nutini
Working Group Leader: Alan Gerber

The 2018 INSAR Summer Institute, a series of free weekly interactive seminars for early-career researchers and members of the autism community.

Each seminar was be co-presented by a team of researchers and stakeholders from the autism community who have developed successful partnerships.

The presentations are designed for students, post-doctoral fellows, early-career investigators, families, service providers, and people with autism and their families. Anyone is welcome to attend.

Please note: You do not have to be a member of INSAR to attend, but you do need to have a profile in which your registration is processed. If you do not have a profile in our system, please see these INSTRUCTIONS to Create A Profile, then Register for Summer Institute.

 

Autism CRC announces Research Co-Production Partner initiative

7 April 2018
Categories: News & Announcements

Autism CRC has announced they are now accepting applications from organisations that demonstrate commitment to research co-production on a sustained basis and would like to be recognised as Autism CRC Research Co-Production Partners.

Evidence demonstrates that engaging individuals on the spectrum and their families and carers as peers in research – from the definition of need to the conduct of research and its application – promotes quality, translatable research relevant to the needs of the community. To highlight those organisations who are committed to sustainable research co-production, Autism CRC has established its Research Co-production Partner initiative.

Autism CRC is looking for organisations that demonstrate:

  • commitment to co-production: through completed, continuing and research yet to commence
  • appropriate engagement and recognition: co-producers on the spectrum and/or their families/carers have been, and will continue to be, engaged, recognised and rewarded appropriately
  • sustainability of co-production: the organisation takes a sustained approach to research co-production, including promotion of co-production internal or external to their organisation.

The deadline to submit an application is 13 June 2018. For more information, please visit the Autism CRC website.

In memoriam of Professor Sylvia Rodger

9 June 2017
Categories: News & Announcements

ASfAR wishes to recognise our former Executive Committee member Professor Sylvia Rodger for her many achievements, including her appointment to Membership of the Order of Australia on Australia Day, 2017. Sylvia was generous in support of Autism research, broader developmental research, occupational therapy, assisted many children, and improved their quality of life. The ASfAR Committee is deeply grateful that Sylvia lent her considerable scholarship and skill to ASfAR. With her passing in 2017, Sylvia will be sorely missed by all who were involved with her.

Autism CRC

Research summary: Prenatal testosterone and language development

29 November 2013
Categories: News & Announcements

2012 Trans-Tasman Runner-Up – Lauren Hollier from Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) on Vimeo.

Today we have our first research summary from a student member of ASfAR! Lauren Hollier is a PhD student at the Telethon Institute/University Western Australia (@childhealthnews).

Lauren recently published a paper on the links between prenatal testosterone levels and language development in typically-developing children, to begin exploring why some children develop language impairments. Below is the link to the article (full text isn’t freely available, I’m sorry to say!)

Autism is among the most severe, prevalent and heritable of all neurodevelopmental disorders. However, the factors causing autism are still unclear.Baron-Cohen (2002) proposed that exposure to higher levels of prenatal testosterone, may play a casual role in the development of autism. However, research in this area has been limited by indirect measures of testosterone and small unrepresentative samples. Using the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study, we were able to investigate the relationship between prenatal testosterone exposure and language development in early childhood. Umbilical cord blood was collected at birth to measure testosterone, and vocabulary was measured at 2 years of age. We found that for boys, higher levels of prenatal testosterone were related to a reduced vocabulary at 2 years of age. No relationship was observed in girls. These findings suggest that in typically developing children, higher levels of fetal testosterone may be related to reduced language development in boys.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301051112002463