Valérie Courchesne

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Assistant) at Université de Montréal

An important minority of school-aged autistic children, often characterized as 'nonverbal' or 'minimally verbal,' displays little or no spoken language. These children are at risk of being judged 'low-functioning' or 'untestable' via conventional cognitive testing practices. One neglected avenue for assessing autistic children so situated is to eng...

Intelligence in minimally verbal children on the autism spectrum (AS) is at risk of being underestimated. The present study investigated testability and cognitive profile of preschool autistic children using conventional tools and strength-informed tools. Fifty-two AS children and fifty-four typical children matched on age (31–77 months) were asses...

Behaviors characterized as restricted and repetitive (RRBs) in autism manifest in diverse ways, from motor mannerisms to intense interests, and are diagnostically defined as interfering with functioning. A variety of early autism interventions target RRBs as preoccupying young autistic children to the detriment of exploration and learning opportuni...

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) is widely used to estimate autistic intelligence (Joseph in The neuropsychology of autism. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011; Goldstein et al. in Assessment of autism spectrum disorders. Guilford Press, New York, 2008; Mottron in J Autism Dev Disord 34(1):19-27, 2004). However, previous studies su...

Background Clinicians diagnosing autism rely on diagnostic criteria and instruments in combination with an implicit knowledge based on clinical expertise of the specific signs and presentations associated with the condition. This implicit knowledge influences how diagnostic criteria are interpreted, but it cannot be directly observed. Instead, insi...

Background: Mental health problems are elevated in autistic individuals but there is limited evidence on the developmental course of problems across childhood. We compare the level and growth of anxious-depressed, behavioral and attention problems in an autistic and typically developing (TD) cohort. Methods: Latent growth curve models were appli...

Background Clinicians diagnosing autism rely on diagnostic instruments and criteria in combination with an implicit knowledge of the specific signs and presentations associated with the condition, based on clinical expertise. This implicit knowledge influences how diagnostic criteria are interpreted but cannot be directly observed. Instead, insight...

The current prospective cohort study investigated whether early perceptual abilities, measured at preschool age, could predict later intellectual abilities at school age in a group of 41 autistic (9 girls, 32 boys) and 57 neurotypical children (29 girls, 28 boys). More than 80% of the autistic children were considered minimally verbal. Participants...

Early regression (ER) is often reported in autistic children with a prototypical phenotype and has been proposed as a possible pathognomonic sign present in most autistic children. Despite the uncertainties attached to its definition and report, using ER to anchor the autism phenotype could help identify the signs that best contribute to an autism...

The Autism Voices study draws on novel inclusive methods to obtain the first-person experiences of autistic youth with a range of cognitive and verbal abilities. Thirty-one autistic youth were interviewed with a strength-based protocol, enabling them to provide responses in the modality of their choice. Dynamics between youth and their environments...

Early regression (ER) is often reported in autistic children with a prototypical phenotype, and has been proposed as possible pathognomonic sign, present in mot autistic children. Despite the uncertainties attached to its definition and report, using ER to anchor the autism phenotype could help identify the signs contributing the best to the autism...

Starting early in life, autistics are characterized as having atypical facial expressions, as well as decreased positive and increased negative affect. The literature on autistic facial expressions remains small, however, with disparate methods and results suggesting limited understanding of common autistic emotions. Furthermore, unlike non-autisti...

Background The question of cognitive prognosis is frequently asked at the time of autism diagnosis, often at preschool age. It remains however difficult to answer this question at such a young age, given the considerable heterogeneity of cognitive development trajectories and the challenges associated with intellectual assessment in autistic childr...

Intellectual assessment in preschool autistic children bears many challenges, particularly for those who have lower language and/or cognitive abilities. These challenges often result in underestimation of their potential or exclusion from research studies. Understanding how different instruments and definitions used to identify autistic preschool c...

Opportunities to communicate first-person perspectives are essential for self-determination. However, many autistic youth are excluded from sharing their perspectives, specifically those who are minimally verbal or with lower intellectual functioning. Current challenges to capturing their voices include a lack of appropriate inclusive methodologies...

Background Restricted and repetitive behavior (RRB) is one of the characteristic features of Autism Spectrum Disorder. This domain of symptoms includes a broad range of behaviors. There is a need to study each behavior individually to better understand the role of each in the development of autistic children. Moreover, there are currently no longit...

Background Language delay is one of the major referral criteria for an autism evaluation. Once an autism spectrum diagnosis is established, the language prognosis is among the main parental concerns. Early language regression (ELR) is observed by 10–50% of parents but its relevance to late language level and socio-communicative ability is uncertain...

Background: Restricted and repetitive behaviors are one of the characteristic features of Autism Spectrum Disorder. This domain of symptoms includes a broad range of behaviors. There is a need to study each behavior individually to better understand the role they each have in the development of autistic children. Moreover, there are currently no lo...

Background Studies on autistic strengths are often focused on what they reveal about autistic intelligence and, in some cases, exceptional and atypical reasoning abilities. An emerging research trend has demonstrated how interests and strengths often evident in autism can be harnessed in interventions to promote the well-being, adaptive, academic a...

Most research regarding youth with autism spectrum disorder has not focused on their first-person perspectives providing limited insight into methodologies best suited to eliciting their voices. We conducted a synthesis of methods previously used to obtain the first-person perspectives of youth with various disabilities, which may be applicable to...

Most research regarding youth with autism spectrum disorder has not focused on their first-person perspectives providing limited insight into methodologies best suited to eliciting their voices. We conducted a synthesis of methods previously used to obtain the first-person perspectives of youth with various disabilities, which may be applicable to...

Background: An often-repeated but questionable claim about repetitive behaviors in autism is that they interfere with learning. More specifically, increased repetitive behaviors are thought to reduce exploration of the environment in autistic children, thus reducing opportunities for learning (Pierce & Courchesne E., 2001; Sasson et al., 2008, for...

Background: Recent work suggests that we are better at interpreting facial emotions of typically developing (TD) individuals than those of individuals on the Autism Spectrum (AS) (Brewer et al., 2015). Also, preliminary findings using the Montreal Stimulating Play Situation (MSPS), showed that AS children, who have similar number of both positive a...

Background: The estimated IQ of individuals on the autism spectrum (AS) differs depending on the intelligence test used. The most replicated finding is the discrepancy between Wechsler Intelligence Scales and Raven Progressive Matrices (RPM), in favor of the latter. Some authors also suggested that IQ in AS children differs between girls and boys,...

Background: A DSM-5 autism spectrum diagnosis requires specifying the co-occurrence of language impairment. Considering the gap between receptive and expressive language skills, the APA recommends a separate assessment of these subdomains (APA, 2013). Contrary to typically developing (TD) children, receptive language is usually lower than expressiv...

Background: Young autistic children are claimed to have excessively negative and dysregulated emotions, with pervasively reduced positive affect (Zwaigenbaum et al., 2013; Hirschler-Guttenberg et al., 2015). However, in preliminary data from the Montreal Stimulating Play Situation (MSPS; Jacques et al., 2015), young autistic and age-matched typical...

Malgré de nombreuses recherches dans le domaine de la cognition en autisme, l'application des résultats de recherche au sein des milieux cliniques demeure ardue. Le présent article vise à diminuer l'écart existant entre les résultats de recherche et la pratique clinique dans ce domaine. Une revue critique de la littérature sur l'intelligence, le ra...

The autism spectrum (AS) is characterised by enhanced perception in vision and audition, described by the enhanced perceptual functioning (EPF) model. This model predicts enhanced low-level (discrimination of psychophysical dimensions), and mid- and high-level (pattern detection and identification) perception. The EPF model is here tested for olfac...

Background: Different intelligence tests can portray autistic children’s abilities in very different ways. For some individuals, there can be a considerable mismatch between scores on different tests. For example, many non-speaking autistic children simply cannot be evaluated with the Wechsler scales and are therefore considered to be intellectuall...

Background: Starting with the first descriptions by Kanner and Asperger, atypical sensory processing has been recognized as an essential feature of the autistic spectrum. Considerable clinical and experimental evidence on atypical sensory processing and autistic strengths in low level perception has been gathered. The Enhanced Perceptual Functionin...