This volume covers several perspectives on autism which bring together the most recent scientific views of the nature of this disorder. A number of themes organize major developments and emerging areas in autism:

• Cognitive and neural systems development: how autism arises in the behavior and thought of very young children.


• Discovering brain mechanisms underlying social and cognitive deficits in autism: how we can explain "social awkwardness" and poor language comprehension in terms of malfunctions of brain mechanisms, revealed by fMRI studies of people with autism.


• Integrating information about genes, brain, and biological mechanisms with behavioral evidence.


• Linking the science of autism with lives lived: how the new information about autism impacts people with autism and real-world considerations.