Alan J Lincoln

Alliant International University · California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) Clinical Ph.D. Program San Diego

Background In a crossover design the current study describes the efficacy of a computer-assisted intervention program for youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who also experience co-occurring anxiety. Methods The computer-assisted cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) program for treating anxiety, Camp Cope-A-Lot (CCAL) was compared to control int...

The American Psychological Association (APA), under the oversight of the Board of Educational Affairs, and the Board of Professional Affairs, is responsible for the education and training of psychologists in prescriptive authority. All APA standards and guidelines are required by Association Rule 30-8.3 to be revised at least every 10 years. The st...

Individuals with autism and intellectual impairments tend to be excluded from research due to their difficulties with methodological compliance. This study focuses on using Teaching with Acoustic Guidance-TAGteach-to behaviorally prepare children with autism and a IQ ≤ 80 to participate in a study on neurofeedback training (NFT). Seven children (ag...

Save time, money and energy with the new data collection tool from ABA Monitor ABA Monitor is a mobile data management application for the iPad that is designed to collect, store, graph and evaluate behavioral data. The data can be used to evaluate a client’s progress, and modify behavioral intervention strategies. It can also be used in research i...

Several studies provide evidence for autistic-like traits in social, communication, and stereotyped repetitive behaviors in first-degree relatives of individuals with autism. Studies have also shown that individuals with autism demonstrate a deficit in the ability to rapidly shift their attention. The current study extends the previous findings of...

For individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), salient behaviorally-relevant information often fails to capture attention, while subtle behaviorally-irrelevant details commonly induce a state of distraction. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neurocognitive networks underlying attentional ca...

Williams syndrome (WS) is associated with deficits in adaptive behavior and an uneven adaptive profile. This study investigated the association of intelligence, visual-motor functioning, and personality characteristics with the adaptive behavior in individuals with WS. One hundred individuals with WS and 25 individuals with developmental disabiliti...

The cerebellum plays important roles in sensori-motor and supramodal cognitive functions. Cellular, volumetric, and functional abnormalities of the cerebellum have been found in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but no comprehensive investigation of cerebro-cerebellar connectivity in ASD is available. We used resting-state functional connectivity ma...

This course will provide an overview of medications, with an emphasis on the target symptoms and side effects of those medications, used in the treatment of persons with neurodevelopmental disorders. Participants will be instructed in how to conceptualize symptoms based on neuropsychological correlates of pathophysiology as well as behavior functio...

Atypical sensory responses are common in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While evidence suggests impaired auditory-visual integration for verbal information, findings for nonverbal stimuli are inconsistent. We tested for sensory symptoms in children with ASD (using the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile) and examined unisensory and bisensory processi...

Impairments in sensorimotor integration are reported in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Poor control of balance in challenging balance tasks is one suggested manifestation of these impairments, and is potentially related to ASD symptom severity. Reported balance and symptom severity relationships disregard age as a potential covariate, however, des...

Importance: Converging evidence indicates that brain abnormalities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) involve atypical network connectivity, but it is unclear whether altered connectivity is especially prominent in brain networks that participate in social cognition. Objective: To investigate whether adolescents with ASD show altered functional c...

We sought to examine, via Phosphorus-31 magnetic resonance spectroscopy ((31)P-MRS) in a case-control design, whether bioenergetic deficits in autism spectrum disorders extend to the brain and muscle. Six cases with autism spectrum disorder with suspected mitochondrial dysfunction (age 6-18 years) and 6 age/sex-matched controls underwent (31)P magn...

Typical adults show an inverse relation between callosal fiber length and degree of interhemispheric connectivity. This has been hypothesized to be a consequence of the influence of conduction delays and cellular costs during development on axonal pruning, both of which increase with fiber length. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) provides a test of t...

Impaired network organization may be linked to sociocommunicative and other impairments in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Strong evidence suggests atypical functional connectivity in ASD. Functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI) studies have predominantly focused on temporal BOLD signal correlations between distal brain regions, thus much more is know...

Background: Social skills deficits continue to be an impacting characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (Woodruff, 2011). Studies indicate adolescents who have a single diagnosis of an anxiety disorder tend to have great deficits in social skills but very little research has examined the social deficits among adolescents with ASD and comorb...

The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate whether a modified version of the Coping Cat program could be effective in reducing anxiety in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty-two children (ages 8-14; IQ ≥ 70) with ASD and clinically significant anxiety were randomly assigned to 16 sessions of the Coping Cat program (cognitive-b...

Background: The Program for the Evaluation and Enrichment of Relations Skills (PEERS) program is a manualized, parent-assisted social skills intervention for adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. Parent (or main caregiver) participation is mandatory and parent sessions are conducted in parallel to teen sessions. The authors of the PEERS Progr...

We piloted a suite of approaches aimed to facilitate a successful series of up to four brain and muscle (31)Phosphorus-Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy ((31)P-MRS) scans performed in one session in 12 awake, non-sedated subjects (ages 6-18), 6 with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 6 controls. We targeted advanced preparation, parental input, phys...

Two neurodevelopmental disorders, Williams syndrome (WS) and autism, are both commonly described as having opposite social profiles: social avoidance in autism vs hypersociability in individuals with WS. The goal of this study was to contrast the brain activity associated with language processing in these two populations, in order to understand the...

Article abstract—Objective: To quantify developmental abnormalities in cerebral and cerebellar volume in autism. Methods: The authors studied 60 autistic and 52 normal boys (age, 2 to 16 years) using MRI. Thirty autistic boys were diagnosed and scanned when 5 years or older. The other 30 were scanned when 2 through 4 years of age and then diagnosed...

Background: Atypical responses to sensory stimuli are frequently seen in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), implying that sensory information may be processed abnormally. Such atypical responses can be detected using the Sensory Profile, an instrument often used in ASD and ADHD to measure sensory perception aptitude. In view of the hete...

Background: Studies have shown deficits in rapidly shifting attention between auditory and visual modalities in individuals with known cerebellar pathology and who have a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with abnormal cerebellar growth, such as autism or Williams syndrome. Research also provides evidence for a broader phenotype of autism, c...

Background: Autism prevalence rates are assumed to be unbiased across ethnicity. However, the prevalence of identified cases of autism within the American Indian and Alaska Native population in California is much less than that observed for other ethnicities and lower than the expected rate. American Indians / Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) with autism ar...

Williams syndrome (WMS) is a rare genetic disorder with an estimated prevalence of 1 in 20 000 live births. Among other characteristics, WMS has a distinctive cognitive profile with spared face processing and language skills that contrasts with impairment in the cognitive domains of spatial cognition, problem solving and planning. It remains unclea...

Children of deployed military personnel represent a unique subculture in the United States. While many children exhibit high levels of resiliency, others will struggle with the impact of a parent who has gone to war. This article looks at some of the stressors of deployment as experienced by children and offers three case examples as well as clinic...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is increasingly viewed as a disorder of functional networks, highlighting the importance of investigating white matter and interregional connectivity. We used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine white matter integrity for the whole brain and for corpus callosum, internal capsule, and middle cerebellar peduncle i...

Background: Families with children with Autistic Disorder (AD) exhibit decreases in cohesion and adaptability, increased social isolation (Higgins et al., 2005), higher levels of marital dissatisfaction (Hastings et al., 2005), and overall disruption to daily life (Bristol et al., 1988). Higher levels of stress, depression, and anxiety (Moes et al....

Background: Anxiety symptoms have long been considered an associated feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Several studies have demonstrated that children with ASD evidence higher levels of clinically significant anxiety compared to their typically developing peers (e.g., Russell & Sofronoff, 2005) and children with other intellectual and lang...

Background: Prior studies have demonstrated that children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) evidence superior visual search abilities compared to typically developing (TD) individuals. Corbetta and Shulman (2002; 2008) have proposed a dual-system model of visual attention for TD individuals: a dorsal frontoparietal network (bilateral f...

Background: Approximately 47 to 84 percent of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience clinically significant levels of anxiety (Gillott, Furniss, & Walter, 2001; Muris, Steerneman, Merckelbach, Holdrinet, & Meesters, 1998). Children with ASD may be at a greater risk for developing anxiety due to inhibited temperament, physiological...

Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit lifelong abnormalities in the adaptive allocation of visual attention. The ubiquitous nature of attentional impairments in ASD has led some authors to hypothesize that atypical attentional modulation may be a factor in the development of higher-level sociocommunicative deficits. Part...

To bridge theory of response inhibition and learning in children with ADHD. Thirty ADHD and 30 non-ADHD children (ages 9-12) were compared under concurrent variable interval (VI-15 sec., VI-30 sec. and VI- 45 sec.) reinforcement schedules that required the child to switch between the three schedules under conditions of experimentally controlled inh...

Background: Previous studies have shown white matter compromise in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which may relate to reduced connectivity and impaired function in distributed networks. However, tract-specific evidence remains limited in ASD. Objectives: To examine connectivity between regions with atypically increas...

Background: Ringo et al (1991) hypothesized that, due to the larger metabolic costs and conduction delays associated with long-distance fibers, species with larger brains would show decreased long-distance connectivity. That hypothesis is supported by computational modeling (Ringo et al, 1991) and cross-species MRI findings (Rilling and Insel, 1999...

Background: A disturbance in the ability to rapidly shift attention between auditory and visual modalities has been observed among individuals with known cerebellar damage and individuals with autism (AD). Based on the strong influence that genetics play in the presence of autism and the spectrum of abnormalities that first-degree relatives of indi...

Background: Elevated blink rates have been related to overactivity of the central dopaminergic systems (Karson, 1983). In the only existing study of eye-blinks in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Goldberg et al. (1987) found elevated blink rates in low-functioning children with ASD as compared to typically developing (TD) and developmentally delayed...

Background: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit early and pervasive abnormalities in attention. It has been suggested that impairments in modulation of attention may underlie the development of sociocommunicative deficits in ASD. We implemented the Attention Network Test (ANT) developed by Fan and colleagues (2002) to investigat...

Background: Atypical responses to sensory stimuli are frequently seen in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), implying that sensory information may be processed abnormally. In previous studies, Dunn’s (1997) Sensory Profile scores have been found to differ between children with autism and their typically developing (TD) peers (Kern et a...

Background: Cross-modal integration is a critical prerequisite to the development of higher-level cognitive functions, including language and social communication. However, information sharing between auditory and visual modalities and between sensory and attentional domains appears to be severely impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disord...

Although previous studies have shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) excel at visual search, underlying neural mechanisms remain unknown. This study investigated the neurofunctional correlates of visual search in children with ASD and matched typically developing (TD) children, using an event-related functional magnetic resonan...

An increasing body of literature has indicated that social stories are an effective way to teach individuals diagnosed with autism appropriate social behavior. This study compared two formats of a social story targeting the improvement of social skills during game play using a pretest posttest repeated measures randomized control group design. A to...

The effects of the military deployment of parent-soldiers on children and families need to be understood in the context of military culture as well as from developmental risk for maladjustment. Although research addressing such effects is limited in both scope and certainty, we can identify several key factors that relate to psychological risk, adj...

The present study examined fixation frequency and duration during an Embedded Figures Test (EFT) in an effort to better understand the attentional and perceptual processes by which individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) achieve accelerated EFT performance. In particular, we aimed to elucidate differences in the patterns of eye-movement in...

This study compared the physiological functioning and trauma symptoms of a sample of adult college students who were exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) as children to a sample physically or sexually abused as children and a sample with no history of abuse. Heart rates, levels of salivary cortisol, and trauma symptoms were measured before a...

Background: Previous studies investigating visual search in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have demonstrated accelerated response times (RT) and enhanced search efficiency. However, the underlying neural mechanisms remain unknown. Objectives: To investigate the neurofunctional correlates of visual search in children with ASD and typically develop...

Background: Previous studies have shown atypical eye-movements in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), mostly in response to social stimuli. Studies of binocular coordination during reading suggest that ocular disparity is related to task difficulty. Binocular coordination may thus provide added insight into the mechanisms contributing to superior searc...

Background: Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are pervasive neurodevelopmental conditions that are characterized by atypical behavioral profiles including deficits in social reciprocity and communication. Recent MRI studies have shown that white matter tissue is affected in patients with ASD. This may impair the brain tissue connectivity resulting...

Background: Previous research has shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) excel at the embedded figures test (EFT), but the causes of this superiority are not well understood. Eye-tracking provides a tool for investigating cognitive effort by measuring the pupillary response, which has been previously shown to reflect cognitive w...

Introduction Background Facilitation effects are seen in typical adults when redundant information is received through two or more sensory modalities (1). The unique sensory responses seen in autistic individuals (2) imply sensory information may be processed differently. Further, evidence of reduced long-distance connectivity in autism (3) may sug...

Decision-making is an important function that can be quantified using a two-choice prediction task. Individuals with Autistic Disorder (AD) often show highly restricted and repetitive behavior that may interfere with adaptive decision-making. We assessed whether AD adults showed repetitive behavior on the choice task that was unaffected by changing...

Autistic disorder (AD) and Williams syndrome (WS) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by contrasting abnormal social behavior (the former, socially avoidant; the latter, outwardly social); nonetheless, there are individuals with WS who display some behaviors that are characteristic of AD. We quantified the extent to which autism spectrum...

We sought to clarify the nature of the face processing strength commonly observed in individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) by comparing the face recognition ability of persons with WS to that of persons with autism and to healthy controls under three conditions: Upright faces with neutral expressions, upright faces with varying affective expressi...

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is an operational measure of sensorimotor gating and is impaired in a family of neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by abnormalities of inhibitory function. Adults with autistic disorder (AD) exhibit clinical features of inhibitory deficits, such as restrictive and repetitive behaviors, that may be explained by defici...

The executive function theory was utilized to examine the relationship between cognitive process and the restricted, repetitive symptoms of Autistic Disorder (AD). Seventeen adults with AD were compared to 17 nonautistic controls on a new executive function battery (Delis-Kaplin Executive Function Scales). Restricted, repetitive symptoms were measu...

Williams syndrome (WS), a neurodevelopmental disorder, is characterized by pervasive cognitive deficits alongside a relative sparing of auditory perception and cognition. A frequent characteristic of the phenotype is adverse reactions to, and/or fascination with, certain sounds. Previously published reports indicate that people with WS experience h...

Williams Syndrome (WS), a neurodevelopmental genetic disorder, is characterized by peaks and valleys in mental function: substantial impairments in cognitive domains such as reasoning, arithmetic ability, and spatial cognition, alongside relatively preserved skills in social domains, face processing, language, and music. We report the results of a...

The relationship between age and IQ was evaluated in a cross-sectional sample of 80 individuals with Williams syndrome (17 to 52 years). The relationship between age and WAIS-R subtest scores was such that increases and decreases in raw scores occurred at a rate sufficient to maintain stability of age-corrected scaled scores, indicating a developme...

To test the hypothesis that a combination of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain measures obtained during early childhood distinguish children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) from typically developing children and is associated with functional outcome. Quantitative MRI technology was used to measure gray and white matter volumes (cerebrum a...

To identify the relationship between specific genes and phenotypic features of Williams syndrome. Subjects were selected based on their deletion status determined by fluorescence in situ hybridization using a panel of 24 BACs and cosmids spanning the region commonly deleted and single gene analysis using Southern blotting. From the cohort of subjec...

An experimental paradigm that assesses one's capacity to perform intermodality attention shifting has proved to be sensitive for persons with cerebellar dysfunction. The basic experiment includes three conditions, auditory focus, visual focus and shift attention. In the auditory focus condition, the participant is instructed to press a joystick but...

To define predictors of disease-specific quality of life (QOL) and the relationship between asthma symptoms and disease-specific QOL. Three hundred thirty-nine children participated at 4 of 8 Childhood Asthma Management Program clinical centers. Included in the analyses were 2 weeks of asthma symptom data, child-reported health status, and QOL scor...

States of heightened emotion and arousal, such as those that may occur during crimes or traumatic accidents, can impair human memory. Animal models suggest that such memory alterations may be mediated by opioid neuropeptides. In some experimental paradigms, opioid blockade reverses memory impairments related to arousal. The present study evaluated...

To quantify developmental abnormalities in cerebral and cerebellar volume in autism. The authors studied 60 autistic and 52 normal boys (age, 2 to 16 years) using MRI. Thirty autistic boys were diagnosed and scanned when 5 years or older. The other 30 were scanned when 2 through 4 years of age and then diagnosed with autism at least 2.5 years later...

Motor impairment has frequently been described in Asperger syndrome (AS), a pervasive developmental disorder included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition (DSM-IV). Previous research focusing on this motor dysfunction has yielded inconsistent results, and the "clumsiness" observed clinically remains poorly defin...

Article abstract—Objective: To quantify,developmental,abnormalities,in cerebral,and,cerebellar,volume,in autism. Methods: The authors studied 60 autistic and 52 normal boys (age, 2 to 16 years) using MRI. Thirty autistic boys were diagnosed,and,scanned,when,5 years,or older. The other,30 were,scanned,when,2 through,4 years,of age,and,then diagnosed...

Studies of abnormal populations provide a rare opportunity for examining relationships between cognition, genotype and brain neurobiology, permitting comparisons across these different levels of analysis. In our studies, we investigate individuals with a rare, genetically based disorder called Williams syndrome (WMS) to draw links among these level...

Autistic disorder is a complex genetic disease. Because of previous reports of individuals with autistic disorder with duplications of the Prader-Willi/Angelman syndrome critical region, we screened several markers across the 15q11-13 region, for linkage disequilibrium. One hundred forty families, consisting predominantly of a child with autistic d...

The purpose of this study was to assess the neurodevelopmental status of children after Fontan repair of functional single ventricle and to examine the relationship between cognitive function and selected patient characteristics. Neurodevelopmental tests including the Stanford-Binet Intelligence (IQ) scale and the Developmental Test of Visual Motor...

To evaluate whether children with borderline disorder (also referred to as multiple complex developmental disorder) (BD/MCDD) and comorbid attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) demonstrate evidence of abnormal attention and/or auditory processing impairments as indexed by both behavioral and physiological measures. Three groups of childre...

The atypical pattern of development first described by Hans Asperger over 50 years ago (Asperger, 1944, Asperger, 1968), commonly referred to as Asperger syndrome (AS), has only recently been included by the American Psychiatric Association as one subtype of Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD; APA, 1994). It is now believed that all PDD, includi...