The underlying reason autism is often associated with gastrointestinal problems is an unknown, but new results to be published in the online journal mBio® on January 10 reveal that the guts of autistic children differ from other children in at least one important way: many children with autism harbor a type of bacteria in their guts that non-autistic children do not. The study was conducted by Brent Williams and colleagues at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

In the first study to investigate driving as it relates to teens with a high-functioning autism disorder (HFASD), child development and teen driving experts at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies found that two-thirds of teenagers with a high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFASD) who are of legal driving age in their state are currently driving or plan to drive.

The study is published this month in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

A HFASD is characterized by subtle impairments in social interaction, communication, motor skills and coordination and by a difficulty in regulating emotions. Many of these capabilities come into play when driving.

Parents of picky eaters can encourage their children to eat more nutritionally diverse diets by introducing more color to their meals, according to a new Cornell University study. The study finds that colorful food fare is more appealing to children than adults. Specifically, food plates with seven different items and six different colors are particularly appealing to children, while adults tend to prefer fewer colors only three items and three colors.

A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder could be a wake-up call for parents of toddlers: Daytime naps for your kids may be more important than you think.

The study shows toddlers between 2 and a half and 3 years old who miss only a single daily nap show more anxiety, less joy and interest and a poorer understanding of how to solve problems, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Monique LeBourgeois, who led the study. The results indicate insufficient sleep alters the facial expressions of toddlers - exciting events are responded to less positively and frustrating events are responded to more negatively, she said.

Young children whose mothers talk with them more frequently and in more detail about people's thoughts and feelings tend to be better at taking another's perspective than other children of the same age.

That's what researchers from the University of Western Australia found in a new longitudinal study published in the journal Child Development.

"Parents who frequently put themselves in someone else's shoes in conversations with their children make it more likely that their children will be able to do the same," according to Brad Farrant, postdoctoral fellow at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research at the University of Western Australia, the study's lead author.

Most adults can't recall events that took place before they were 3 or 4 years old - a phenomenon called childhood amnesia. While some people can remember what happened at an earlier age, the veracity of their memories is often questioned. Now a new longitudinal study has found that events experienced by children as young as 2 can be recalled after long delays.

The study, by researchers at the University of Otago (in New Zealand), appears in the journal Child Development.

Alcohol use has often been linked to criminal activity on the part of both perpetrators as well as victims. While this relationship has been well documented among adults, fewer studies have explored this relationship among adolescents. A new study has found a strong relationship between drinking during adolescence and the commission of crimes, and criminal victimization, for both genders.

Results will be published in the March 2012 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

Even kindergarteners know that thinking positively will make you feel better. And parents' own feelings of optimism may play a role in whether their children understand how thoughts influence emotions.

Those are the findings of a new study by researchers at Jacksonville University and the University of California, Davis. The study appears in the journal Child Development.

The ability to trust, love, and resolve conflict with loved ones starts in childhood - way earlier than you may think. That is one message of a new review of the literature in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. "Your interpersonal experiences with your mother during the first 12 to 18 months of life predict your behavior in romantic relationships 20 years later," says psychologist Jeffry A. Simpson, the author, with University of Minnesota colleagues W. Andrew Collins and Jessica E. Salvatore.

Undergoing surgery can be a terrifying experience for a child. But stress and fear, and the use of pain relief after the procedure, can be reduced with simple means: drawings, continuity and dialogue. This has been shown by research at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Berith Wennström presents in her thesis interviews with children describing how they experienced being in hospital and undergoing surgery. The thesis also presents work in which, for example, saliva samples from 93 children aged between 5 and 11 years have been analysed, to measure the concentration of the stress hormone cortisol.

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