Children with dyslexia might also be having difficulties with social skills

A reluctance to do any reading may be a classic sign of dyslexia, but there may be other tell-tale signs that can raise a parent's concern according to Joanna Dunton of Bangor University's Miles Dyslexia Centre.

Speaking ahead of Dyslexia Awareness Week, (3- 9 November) Language Therapist Jo Dunton explained that children with dyslexia might be having difficulties with reading, spelling and writing, but also with social skills, and with other seemingly unrelated areas.

"It could be that a dyslexic child may be particularly prone to forgetting things or being rather disorganised," explained Jo Dunton.

"Because of the challenges facing them, children with dyslexia may appear withdrawn or lose interest in school work, or might want to avoid going to school and, research has shown, could often be bullied or socially isolated due to their difficulties."

"These differences can lead to low self-esteem, especially if the child doesn't understand why they're having to struggle to do things that other children seem to be able to achieve with ease."

"Recognising the problem can be extremely helpful, as can setting things in place to help the dyslexic child overcome the particular difficulties facing them."

However dyslexia is not all negative, many people with dyslexia have great spatial or 3D awareness, and many go on to be engineers.

Places such as the spy HQ GCHQ have dyslexics ranking among their staff as does space agency NASA, so the sky's the limit!

If you think your child may be facing difficulties with reading, writing or any educationally related problem, then the first port of call should be the school" she told reporters.

"However, here at the Miles Dyslexia Centre we're always willing to speak with parents and advise them and can provide consultation sessions for parents and children."

Jo's Top Tips for Parents:

• Talk to your child - discuss their day or their feelings. Vocabulary has been shown to have a major impact on developing literacy skills.
• Look at the whole person rather than focus on your child's difficulties. Encourage then to get involved with things that they are good at as this will help build self-esteem.
• Don't let homework become a battle ground. Little and often is more effective, reading one page or practising one word is better than nothing at all.
• Spelling practice can be done with a whiteboard or with plastic letters. Try to find a way to make it fun.
• Reading does not always have to be from a book. Perhaps use sets of word cards to make sentences, play matching or pairs games. Don't let your child view it as a chore that has to be done.
• Out shopping- ask your child to read out the shopping list or the signs around the store. We are surrounded by words, use them as resources.
• Talk to the school about any concerns you may have. Working together with the school can lead to a more coordinated response to any difficulties.
• Self-organisation can be a key difficulty leading to forgotten books, kit, pens etc. Encourage your child to develop a routine. Is it swimming tomorrow? – Get the kit ready tonight!
• Encourage the use of memory joggers such as checklists, 'to do' lists or school planners. Perhaps a large chalkboard or whiteboard could be used as a family planner.
• Remember reading and spelling are skills, and, like any skill, they need lots of regular practice. Footballers, swimmers and tennis stars also have to work hard to improve their skills!

FASD: Alcohol during pregnancy causes impaired social skills in children

A recent study published in Child Neuropsychology has found that drinking alcohol while pregnant means your child is more likely to develop issues with social skills as they grow older.

The results of the study indicate that children with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) who do not have a global intellectual disability are at high risk of developing significant problems in a broad array of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social domains.

125 children aged between 6 and 12 participated in the study, 97 of whom met diagnostic criteria for a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).

The children underwent a comprehensive multi-informant assessment of neurocognitive, emotional, social, behavioural, and adaptive functioning.

The results of the study indicated that the children who had prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), returned significantly poorer scores compared to the non-exposed group on tests measuring executive functioning (the processes that help us connect past experience with present action, the skills we use for organization and planning), attention, working /visuospatial memory, linguistic abstraction, adaptive behaviour, emotional/behavioural functioning, and social cognition (understanding of why people do the things that they do).

The study showed that while the children with PAE and the non-exposed children attributed hostile intentions towards provocative behaviors by their peers, e.g. pushing and shoving, the children affected by PAE were more likely to attribute hostile intentions to situations that did not involve physical provocation e.g. asking if they can play and being told 'no'.

The parents of children with PAE also gave greater reports of inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive behavior and the children were shown to also be more likely to show depressive symptoms.

The group of children with PAE were also shown to have more social problems according to assessments involving parents and teachers. These results maintained their significance past controlling for IQ, demonstrating that relying on IQ alone to guide parental, peer, and school expectations may be misleading.

The study also notes that this may also suggest that the negative effects of PAE are above and beyond the control of intelligence.

The study concludes by suggesting that the results mean it is becoming increasingly more evident that there is a pressing need for early identification of social issues related to prenatal alcohol exposure and intervention in order to take advantage of the developing brain's plasticity and to maximise the likelihood of effecting meaningful functional improvement.

More information: Justin L. Quattlebaum & Mary J. O'Connora "Higher functioning children with prenatal alcohol exposure: Is there a specific neurocognitive profile?" Child Neuropsychology: A Journal on Normal and Abnormal Development in Childhood and Adolescence Volume 19, Issue 6, 2013 DOI: 10.1080/09297049.2012.713466

Social Media Guru Jason Falls Talks about Parenting - YouTube

Social business marketing guru Jason Falls and talk about parenting.

Jason Falls, co-author of No Bullshit Social Media is one of the most in-demand speakers in the social media, public relations and marketing fields due to a simple truth: He delivers value. Known for his clever insights, sharp wit and the ever-present brutal honesty, Falls tackles audiences, not topics, engaging and sending all away with a sense they’ve learned something.

Perhaps at best in the role of social media educator, Falls has spoken nationally and internationally on a wide range of topics and to a variety of audiences. From corporate board rooms to standing-room-only conference halls, Falls caters each presentation to the audience make up, energy and comprehension level.

Falls also coordinates workshops on social media marketing for groups like American Marketing Association, Public Relations Society of America and International Association of Business Communicators chapters. Lisa Ross, president of the Central Virginia Chapter of the AMA had this to say after his Digital Marketing Summit in April of 2010:

“Jason developed content for a full-day seminar for our organization on Digital Marketing. He brought in other social and digital media experts to give the event added interest. Not only is Jason a brilliant speaker, he delivered a turnkey event that was profitable for our chapter and got rave reviews from the attendees.”

To book Jason for your event, or contact him about collaborating for more involved events for  your organization, send him a message on his booking page.

You can visit his website, www.jasonfalls.com
OR explore his resources at www.socialmediaexplorer.com

Does Teaching toddlers to pay attention help academic success

The secret to raising an academic child is not to coach toddlers in maths or play them classical music, but to teach them to pay attention, research by child development experts suggests.

Toddlers who are better at concentrating, taking directions and persisting with a game even after hitting difficulties have a 50 per cent greater chance of getting a degree when older, a two-decade long experiment found.

The study (Relations between preschool attention span-persistence ..)  tracked 430 kids from pre-school to 21-years-old, monitoring academic and social development, behavioural skills and behaviour at home and in the classroom.

Parents were asked to watch how long the children would play with one particular toy while at home, while teachers were instructed to give the class a task and then monitor which toddlers gave up and which ones kept persevering until they had completed it.

Results of the study by Oregon State University were published in the online journal Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

The children most likely to go through further education were those who, at an early age, persisted in tasks and paid attention in pre-school sessions, said researchers.

Researchers said these are qualities that both parents and teachers can easily teach youngsters.

Many ambitious parents try to introduce maths or classical music or other academic subjects to their children to give them a headstart in life but they may be better teaching social skills like paying attention, not giving up and how to follow directions, said child development expert Megan McClelland.

She said: "There is a big push now to teach children early academic skills at the pre-school level.

"Our study shows that the biggest predictor of college completion wasn't maths or reading skills, but whether or not they were able to pay attention and finish tasks at age four."

The pre-school research included seeing how long children would play with a single toy or how easily they would give up when they reached difficulties in a task.

Read the full article here

Selfish, self-centred kids? Blame their immature brains

Dr. Nikolaus Steinbeis

A new study suggests that age-associated improvements in the ability to consider the preferences of others are linked with maturation of a brain region involved in self control.

The findings, published in the March 8 issue of the journal Neuron, may help to explain why young children often struggle to control selfish impulses, even when they know better, and could impact educational strategies designed to promote successful social behaviour.

Human social interactions often involve two parties who want to maximize their own outcomes while reaching a mutually satisfactory result.

It is generally accepted that over the course of childhood behaviour shifts from a more selfish focus to an increased tendency to consider the benefits to others.

However, little is known about age-related changes in this type of "strategic social behaviour" or the underlying neuronal mechanisms.

Researchers from the Max-Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig conducted behavioural and brain-imaging studies comparing children of different ages as they engaged in two carefully constructed games called "The Dictator Game" and "The Ultimatum Game."

In the Dictator Game, children were asked to share a reward with another child who could only passively accept what was offered.

In the Ultimatum Game, the recipient had to accept the offer or neither child received a reward. Therefore, the games differed in the demand for strategic behavior for the child making the offer.

"We were interested in whether children would share more fairly if their counterparts could reject their offers, and to what extent strategic behaviour was dependent on age and brain development," explains lead study author, Dr. Nikolaus Steinbeis.

"We observed an age-related increase in strategic decision making between ages 6 to 13 years and showed that changes in bargaining behaviour were best accounted for by age-related differences in impulse-control abilities and underlying functional activity of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a late-maturing brain region linked with self control," explains Dr. Steinbeis.

The results suggest that egocentric behavior in children may not be a function of an inability to know "fair" from "unfair," but is instead due to an immature prefrontal cortex that does not support altruistic behaviour when faced with a situation that has a strong self-serving incentive.

"Our findings represent a critical advance in our understanding of the development of social behaviour with far-reaching implications for educational policy and highlight the importance of helping children act on what they already know," concludes Dr. Steinbeis. "Such interventions could set the foundation for increased altruism in the future."

Kids Learn to Flex Their Cultural Muscles

Preschool kids angling for a reward display social skills that may, on a grander scale, turn human cultures into cauldrons of change and innovation.

Groups of 3- to 4-year-olds, but not clusters of chimpanzees or capuchin monkeys, solved progressively more complex tasks in a puzzle box by employing three key social strategies, say zoologist Rachel Kendal of Durham University in England and her colleagues.

First, children who solved a task taught struggling peers what to do. Second, kids often copied what others did. And finally, task solvers frequently shared stickers they received as rewards with kids who hadn’t yet earned stickers.

This package of social behaviours characterized four- or five-person groups in which at least two kids solved a three-stage puzzle and most of the rest reached stage two, Kendal’s team reports in the March 2 Science.

Chimps and capuchins in groups of eight to 32 rarely got beyond stage one of the same puzzle, the researchers say. No evidence of teaching or sharing of food rewards appeared in these primates. Chimps copied others at the first stage but not at higher stages.

“The stark contrast in skills supporting cultural ability between children and both chimps and capuchins was surprising,” Kendal says. Her study is the first to use the same task to explore social learning in different species.

Previous studies of children’s problem-solving in groups have similarly focused on teaching, imitation and sharing, remarks anthropologist Joseph Henrich of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

These behaviors critically enable human cultures to make rapid advances in knowledge and technology, he says. Further research needs to untangle precisely how this process works, Henrich adds.

Children’s puzzle-box successes may reflect other human mental specialties, such as reasoning with language and inferring others’ intentions, suggest psychologist Robert Kurzban of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and anthropologist H. Clark Barrett of the University of California, Los Angeles, in a commentary published in the same issue of Science.

In Kendal’s study, participants reached chutes containing stickers or food first by moving a sliding door to the left or right, then by pushing either of two buttons to move the door further in the same direction, and finally by turning a dial using one of two colored holes, releasing the door to slide still further.

After 30 hours, only one chimp mastered the puzzle box, but the strategies didn’t spread. After 53 hours, no capuchins cracked all three tasks, and only two solved two tasks.

After 2.5 hours, five of eight kids’ groups contained at least two individuals who had conquered the puzzle box, with most remaining kids in those groups solving two tasks.

ADHD and Teenagers: How to Talk to Anyone! - Leil Lowndes

This book was primarily written for business users and sales staff to help them network but it is equally relevant to teenagers with ADHD, Asperger's and younger people who have difficulties understanding social skills and therefore, in forming relationships.

It can also help young people who are trying to get into more social circles and the job market.

Social deficits associated with autism, schizophrenia induced in mice

Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine have been able to switch on, and then switch off, social-behavior deficits in mice that resemble those seen in people with autism and schizophrenia, thanks to a technology that allows scientists to precisely manipulate nerve activity in the brain.

In synchrony with this experimentally induced socially aberrant behavior, the mice exhibited a brain-wave pattern called gamma oscillation that has been associated with autism and schizophrenia in humans, the researchers say.

The findings, to be published online in Nature on July 27, lend credence to a hypothesis that has been long floated but hard to test, until now.

They mark the first demonstration, the researchers said, that elevating the brain's susceptibility to stimulation can produce social deficits resembling those of autism and schizophrenia, and that then restoring the balance eases those symptoms.

Autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia each affect nearly 1 percent of all people. At present, there are no good drugs for mitigating the social-behavioral deficits of either disorder.

While they differ in many ways, each syndrome is extremely complex, involving diverse deficits including social dysfunction. Mice are social animals, and there are many well-established tests of sociability in these animals.

Social behavior can't be ascribed to a single brain region, said Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of bioengineering and the study's senior author.

"To form a coherent pattern of another individual, you need to quickly integrate all kinds of sensations. And that's just the tip of the iceberg," said Deisseroth, a practicing psychiatrist who routinely sees autistic-spectrum patients.

"It's all changing, millisecond by millisecond, as both you and the other individual act and react. You have to constantly alter your own predictions about what's coming next. This kind of interaction is immensely more uncertain than, for example, predator/prey activity. It seems that it has to involve the whole brain, not just one or another part of it."

One intriguing hypothesis holds that social dysfunctions characteristic of autism and schizophrenia may stem from an altered balance in the propensity of excitatory versus inhibitory nerve cells in the brain to fire, resulting in an overall hyper-responsiveness to stimulation.

Evidence for this hypothesis includes the higher seizure rate among patients with autism, and the fact that many autistic children's brains exhibit elevated levels of a high-frequency brain-wave pattern -- known as "gamma oscillation" -- that can be picked up by an electroencephalogram.

Many schizophrenics also exhibit social deficits as well as higher levels of this anomalous brain-wave pattern, even at rest.

In addition, said Deisseroth, "autistic kids seem to be over-responding to environmental stimuli." For instance, they find eye contact overwhelming, or may cover their ears if there are too many people talking at once.

Social Anxiety: Misreading faces

Children suffering from extreme social anxiety are trapped in a nightmare of misinterpreted facial expressions: They confuse angry faces with sad ones, a new study shows.

"If you misread facial expressions, you're in social trouble, no matter what other social skills you have," says Emory psychologist Steve Nowicki, a clinical researcher who developed the tests used in the study.

"It can make life very difficult, because other people's faces are like a prism through which we look at the world."

It's easy to assume that a socially anxious child would be especially sensitive to anger. "It turns out that they never learn to pick up on anger and often make the error of seeing it as sadness," Nowicki says.

"It sets up a very problematic interaction." Some socially anxious children long to interact with others, he says, and may try to comfort someone they think is sad, but who is actually angry.

"They want to help, because they're good kids," Nowicki says. "I've seen these kids trying to make a friend, and keep trying, but they keep getting rebuffed and are never aware of the reason why."

The study was co-authored by Amy Walker, a former undergraduate student at Emory, now at Yeshiva University, and will be published in the Journal of Genetic Psychology.

It is unclear whether misreading the facial expression is linked to the cause of the anxiety, or merely contributing to it.

By identifying the patterns of errors in nonverbal communication, Nowicki hopes to create better diagnostic tools and interventions for those affected with behavioural disorders.

Misreading faces tied to child social anxiety

Targetting Core Social Deficits of Autism

Targeting the core social deficits of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in early intervention programs yielded sustained improvements in social and communication skills even in very young children who have ASD, according to a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

The study was published online December 8, 2010, in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Although some research suggests that ASD may be reliably diagnosed earlier than the current average age of 3 years, few interventions have been tested in children younger than 3.

During the course of typical development, children learn to interact with others in socially meaningful ways. Measures of social communication include:

• Initiation of joint attention -- spontaneously directing others' attention to something of interest, such as by pointing or holding something up to show for social purposes rather than to ask for help
• Affect sharing -- sharing emotions with others through facial expressions paired with eye contact
• Socially engaged imitation -- imitating others' actions while showing social connectedness through eye contact.

Deficits in such measures are hallmark symptoms of ASD and can severely limit a child's ability to engage in and learn from interactions with others or from the world around them.

"This new report is encouraging, as the effects on social behavior appear to provide a scaffold for the development of skills beyond the research setting," said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. "We need better early interventions for the core deficits of autism."


The interventions were designed to encourage children to make frequent and intentional efforts to engage others in communication or play. The single difference between interventions was that the IS group received more opportunities for joint attention, affect sharing, and socially engaged imitation. The toddlers were assessed at the start and end of the intervention and again six months later.

Children in both groups made improvements in social, cognitive and language skills during the six-month intervention period. Children who received IS made greater and more rapid gains than those in the non-IS group.

The researchers also noted that children in the IS group used their newly acquired abilities with different people, locations, and type of activity. This is noteworthy because children with ASD have particular difficulty doing so. They tend to use new skills mostly within familiar routines and situations.

Journal Reference:

1. Rebecca J. Landa, Katherine C. Holman, Allison H. O’Neill, Elizabeth A. Stuart. Intervention targeting development of socially synchronous engagement in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2010; DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02288.x

What to teach your children about Body Language

It is every parent's responsibility to socialise their children, that includes teaching them about our primary means of communication which is body language.

Essential for interpersonal and business success, body language should be taught to children at an early age so that they can mature with a skill set that will enrich their personal and working lives.

Start to teach your children about body language as soon as they are capable of understanding your instruction (around age 2) and build from there.

Use a good reference guide so that the children can see the behaviour and you can both talk about it. Also make sure that the guide you use is based on science and not on anecdotal information.

There are 10 things you can teach your child to help them develop social and interpersonal intelligence that will help them throughout their lives:

1. All nonverbal communication (body language) has meaning. Some you may not understand, nonetheless, it has meaning. In time I and your friends will teach you what different things mean.
2. Your brain controls all your physical movements as well as all the faces and gestures you make. You have control over your body and the kinds of messages that your body sends out. You need to be mindful of this in the same way that you have to watch what you say.
3. Your body language communicates all the emotions you feel, just as a baby communicates whether she is happy or not. It is evident for everyone to see. When you are happy and excited we can all see this by your smile, happy feet, and outstretched arms.
4. What your body says to me is more accurate than what you say and it speaks to me before you do. So always be aware that often we can tell what you are thinking or feeling before you speak.
5. You can get along better with friends if you read their body language because you'll be able to tell if they are happy or sad, mad or playful, quiet or excited. If you learn to read the body language of your friends, they will find great comfort in you because you care to know how they feel.
6. Just like words can hurt someone’s feelings, body language can do the same thing. When you roll your eyes at me or turn your back and walk away, it says, just as if you had shouted it, that you don’t care and don’t respect me.
7. You can use body language to let others know that you like them and care for them, without ever having to say a word. Just like when you hug me or hold my hand, I can tell you love me without having to say it.
8. When you want something, desire something, or seek something, your body speaks this very clearly. In the same way that when you want to leave or avoid someone, your body tells me how you feel. Your intentions are communicated by your body language also.
9. Some people are very sensitive to their body space and so when you get too close or sit too close they feel uncomfortable. Be aware that sometimes other children or adults need just a little bit more space.
10. If your own body ever feels uncomfortable around someone, please let me know when it happens so I can help you to understand why it is that you feel that way. And know this, because I know your brain is sensitive to your body, I will respect whatever it is that you feel when you say, “I don’t feel comfortable, especially when it is around someone else.”

For additional information check out the Psychology Today posts on the subject, under the author's nom de plume Spycatcher. Additional information and training programs are available at www.jnforensics.com.

Teaching Social Awareness: MyfriendQuest

MyfriendQuest Mainly aimed at teaching social skills to autistic children and teenagers, it is a very interesting approach.

A Personal YouTube Video: i am dyslexic

ok this has taken a lot of curage to uplod i cept puting it of however i got another comment on my aporling spelling so i thort that i need to explain, not for simpethy but for understanding and to spred the nowlage of the dificultys faced by many people who are dyslexic.

i was diagnosed as being saverly dysleixc at the age of 8 and had a re diagnose last summer that comfermed that i am still savialy dysleic, the saverity of someones dysleixa is not yust a test to see how well someone can reed or spell it is a test to mesher up someones inteligence agast a persons reading, spelling and short term memary, so if someone had aporling spelling, reeding and sort tearm memary but the IQ was above average then they are the ones with siverar dyslexia, inother words we are not thik!!! thanks for woching and spred the word dyseliax deosn't = stupidaty!!!

Katie

Parenting Skills: Trust Issues in Children

Researchers examining 'trust' issues in children conducted a study whereby children were shown a video of a ficticious game called 'daxing'. In the video shown to the children, either a boy or a man argued over the correct way to 'dax'.

The child was then asked to play the game 'dax', and the method they chose to use was recorded. Children were also shown a puppet, who interjected and said it was his time to 'dax'.

The Puppet's role
I find the inclusion of a puppet very interesting in this study. I believe that the puppet here represented a non-threatening neutral or objective character, neither adult nor peer and therefore exerted little or no social pressure on the child.

It had no established role, except that of an object that had a social status equal to, or lower than the child and therefore, can easily be addressed and controlled by the child. Perhaps moreso than his peers, perhaps not, but I digress.

To return to the study, the puppet performed 'daxing' either in the way the boy in the film or the man in the film did it, and the children's reactions were recorded.

Results
The researchers found that the children imitated the adult's method of 'daxing' significantly more often than they imitated the boy's method.

Children were also more likely to intervene when the puppet performed 'daxing' using the boy's method, protesting that the puppet was 'daxing' wrongly.

Lessons Learned
The results from the study suggest that children prefer to learn from adults rather than other children when it comes to rule-governed activities like learning a new game.

They also expect other people (the puppet) to learn and perform actions in the way that the adults have defined. This is demonstrated by the expectation that the puppet would also follow the adult's actions and not the boy's and consequent protests if it did not.

Social Norms
These findings tell us many things. Firstly, that young children will more readily accept adult's instructions and behaviour as being right, in normal circumstances and that adults' behaviour should be copied and followed or repeated, accordingly. Certainly, if the other choice is to listen to or comply with their peers or, heaven forbid, a puppet (other people).

This has wide spread implications for social learning of both good, bad and corrective guidance and behaviour in children and adults, especially for parents. The basic expectations of the children are that their parents are the leaders, good role models and positive examples to be trusted, obeyed and followed.

For more information on the study click on the link to the British Psychological Society (BPS)

Autism - Children with autism 'have problem with self-awareness'

It is well known that children suffering from Autism struggle in social situations. Scientists have produced evidence that self-awareness is a big problem for people with autism.

Sophisticated scans showed the brains of people with autism are less active when engaged in self-reflective thought. The findings provide a neurological insight into why people with autism tend to struggle in social situations.

The study, by the University of Cambridge, appears in the Oxford neurological journal Brain.

Navigating social interactions with others requires keeping track of the
relationship between oneself and others - Michael Lombardo, University of Cambridge,

Autism has long been considered a condition of extreme egocentrism.

But research has shown the problem is children with the condition have trouble thinking about, and making sense of, themselves.

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance scans (MRI) to measure brain activity in 66 male volunteers, half of whom had been diagnosed as being within the autistic spectrum.

The volunteers were asked to make judgements either about their own thoughts, opinions, preferences, or physical characteristics, or about someone else's, in this case the Queen.

By scanning the volunteers' brains as they responded to these questions, the researchers were able to visualise differences in brain activity between those with and without autism.

They were particularly interested in part of the brain called the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (vMPFC) - known to be active when people think about themselves.

The researchers found this area of the brain was more active when typical volunteers were asked questions about themselves compared with when they were thinking about the Queen.

However, in autism this brain region responded equally, irrespective of whether they were thinking about themselves or the Queen.

Researcher Michael Lombardo said the study showed that the autistic brain struggled to to process information about the self.

He said: "Navigating social interactions with others requires keeping track of the relationship between oneself and others.

"In some social situations it is important to notice that 'I am similar to you', while in other situations it might be important to notice that 'I am different to you'.

"The atypical way the autistic brain treats self-relevant information as equivalent to information about others could derail a child's social development, particularly in understanding how they relate to the social world around them."

Dr. Gina Gómez de la Cuesta, of the National Autistic Society, described the study as "interesting". "We know many children with autism do want to interact with others and make friends but they have difficulty recognising or understanding other people's thoughts and feelings.

"This research has shown that children with autism may also have difficulty understanding their own thoughts and feelings and the brain mechanisms underlying this."