Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are characterized by impairments in social interaction and reciprocal communication. During a pandemic, when social distancing becomes mandatory for all, both parents and children are not supported in-person by their therapists and cannot participate in usual therapies. This study reports the main clinical changes experienced by parents of children with during the first month of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Using standardized questionnaires, the families of 63 ASD children were interviewed in February and April 2020. Findings showed an increase in restricted and repetitive behaviours in about 30% of the sample; also, motor restlessness and sleep disturbances increased, with greater irritability and mood dysregulation. On the other hand, no changes emerged in personal self-care autonomies, in taste/smell sensitivity, and in auto or other-directed aggression.

Article: Neurodevelopmental outcome in one-year-old children born preterm: differences between low birth weight and very low birth weight - Minerva Pediatrics 2022 Sep 23 - Minerva Medica - Journals

This study is based on implementing backward design to improve students’ academic assessment, so public high school students can take part of meaningful contexts where they show what they learned at the end of a class term. Taking in consideration, backward design is a great tool to be applied for public high schools where most of the classes are textbooks centered, provoking students’ frustration due to the lack of English knowledge from schools. There is a high rate of students failing courses because students are placed in English levels where they do not belong to or they come from other institutions where they did not learn English. Backward design lets teachers be creative and use skills and methodologies according to students’ needs and be very reflexive in the way of designing it. In this study, pairedT_Test is applied to compare scores from the same level, but using different ways of testing. In conclusion, the experimental group (G2), in which backward design was applied, got better results than the controlled group (G1), who did not apply it. In this case the independent variable which mean and scores are high. Results show backward design is very meaningful not only for students, but also for teachers. It is true that running appropriate action plans, selecting the best resources and conducting a final assessment through a performance task, gave the opportunity for students to gain more confidence on the language and apply it in a real context.

Autism spectrum disorders are generally regarded as lifelong conditions, affecting communication, relationships, and adaptive skills. Studies on the developmental trajectories of people out of autism have found adequate adaptive social-communication skills, effective experiences of inclusion in regular education classrooms, normal intellective functioning, and an absence of typical autism symptomatology. It therefore seems plausible to start reading the ‘after autism’ psychopathological conditions in a continuum that features several possible clinical and non-clinical phenotypes. The present retrospective research aimed to examine the different developmental trajectories of 17 children with an original diagnosis of autism, evaluated in a follow-up approximately 5 years after the end of the therapy. The stability of the optimal outcomes is evidenced by the absence of clinical diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder. However, some difficulties persisted in adaptive functioning, especially in the social domain, consistent with the dysfunctional core that characterized the clinical features of autism in childhood. Furthermore, many of the participants showed residual relational atypia, such as alterations in pragmatic communication, or a psycho-affective disorder, or specific developmental disorders. The presence of some residual atypia provides important food for thought, not only in orienting any therapy with which continue to support older children, but also for a greater understanding of the pathological core towards which has evolved the original diagnosis of autism.