Newspaper Articles

~ Mother's Journal Offers Early Look at Child with Autism ~ The Stoney Creek News

~ Mom's Diary Opens Door on Autism ~ The Hamilton Spectator

 ~ Mom's Journal Aids Research into Autism ~ The Hamilton Spectator

 ~ Mom's Diary on Twins Reveals Clues to Autism ~ The National Post

CBC Radio One Interview with Dr. Rutherford ~ click here and scroll down to Autism Diaries and click on listen

CONTINUED STUDY

2006 - Early Detection of Autism: a Longitudinal Study to Assess the Development of Children in their First Year who may be at risk for Autism ~ McMaster University ~ Dr. Melissa Rutherford, PhD.

2007 - Early Detection of Autism: a Longitudinal Study to Assess the Development of Children in their First Year who may be at risk for Autism ~ McMaster University ~ Dr. Melissa Rutherford, PhD.

2008 - McMaster University ~ Dr. Melissa Rutherford, PhD. ~ for continuation of the study Early Detection of Autism

2018 - Hamilton McMaster University- (Hamilton, Ontario)- For the continuation of the Autism Longitudinal Study at McMaster University by Dr. Mel Rutherford. To develop a diagnostic instrument to reliably identify early markers of autism in the first yyear of life. Initially, this project was a follow-up to the journal based case study published in the journal Neurocase (Rutherford 2005).Based on the information that was gathered this case study, he designed a longitudinal study to assess the development of children in their first year who may be at risk for autism.

2020- Following the publication of the twins study (Rutherford, 2005), Dr Rutherford began a longitudinal study following infants with or without a sibling with ASD as they grow into adolescence. The objective of this project is to use eye-tracking technology to measure early social interests in the first year of life and compare such early development to later social cognitive development and ASD diagnostic information.  The study is designed to test whether early interest in social information predicts later development of ASD or of autistic characteristics. This study has already revealed that infants with ASD in the family look to social information less than infants in the control group, who  look longer at faces, at eyes, and at animate motion – and that this difference increases across the first six months (Rutherford 2013). Furthermore, infants developing with ASD show a unique developmental pattern of facial feature scanning, consistent with a delay in attention to spoken words at the onset of word-learning (Rutherford, Walsh & Lee, 2015). Learn more about McMaster's Early Autism Study at  earlyautismstudy.org.