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COVID-19 and Autism Research: Perspectives from Around the Globe.

Amaral et al. (2020) · Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research 2020
★ The Verdict

COVID-19 exposed weak spots in autism research, but follow-up counts show behavioral studies are easier to rescue than drug trials.

✓ Read this if BCBAs writing grants or designing studies that still rely on face-to-face data collection.
✗ Skip if Clinicians only running already-funded single-case designs with stable in-person access.

01Research in Context

01

What this study did

Arwert et al. (2020) wrote a narrative commentary. They asked autism researchers around the world how COVID-19 had hit their work.

The authors did not run new experiments. They gathered short reports and opinions to map sudden gaps in autism science.

02

What they found

Labs closed. Data collection froze. Studies that needed face-to-face contact stopped overnight.

The paper lists urgent gaps: lost participant access, paused drug trials, and little guidance for families.

03

How this fits with other research

Neale et al. (2022) give hard numbers. Only 7.6 % of 197 registered autism trials were dropped, but pharmacological trials halted six times more often than behavioral ones. The early worry was bigger than the real drop.

Amaral et al. (2019) flagged long-standing gaps—heterogeneity and culture—before anyone heard of COVID. The 2020 paper shows the pandemic widened those same cracks.

Courreges et al. (2023) and Faught et al. (2021) add parent voices. Families saw zero new services and double the caregiver distress. These ground-level reports flesh out the global picture first sketched in the 2020 call.

04

Why it matters

You now have a ready-made checklist of fragile study types: drug trials, in-person assessments, and caregiver-supported interventions. Build backup plans—remote options, shorter sessions, mental-health screens—into your next grant or behavior plan so the next crisis does not erase progress.

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02At a glance

Intervention
not applicable
Design
narrative review
Finding
not reported

03Original abstract

David G. Amaral, Evdokia Anagnostou, Vanessa H. Bal, Josephine Barbaro, Angela B. Barber, Ricardo Canal-Bedia, Nola Chambers, Stephen R. Dager, Geraldine Dawson, John-Joe Dawson-Squibb, Petrus J. de Vries, Gabriel Dichter, Cheryl Dissanayake, Gauri Divan, Annette Estes, Dani Fallin, Lauren Franz, Naoufel Gaddour, Alan H. Gerber, Melissa Gilbert, Rebecca M. Girard, Ofer Golan, Johathan Green, Michal Harty, Jill Howard, Darren Hedley, Caitlin M. Hudac, Susan M. Hayward, Lisa V. Ibanez, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Angelina Kakooza Mwesige, Yoko Kamio, Rajesh K. Kana, Jennifer L. Keluskar, Daniel P. Kennedy, Connor M. Kerns, Jessica Kinard, Genevieve Konopka, Frank Kooy, Hirokazu Kumazaki, Janet E. Lainhart, Lauren P. Lawson, Kathy Leadbitter, Matthew D. Lerner, Katherine A. Loveland, Maria Magan-Maganto, Masaru Mimura, Peter Mundy, Taro Muramatsu, Declan Murphy, Bethany Oakley, Sarah O'Kelley, Kally C. O'Reilly, Seon-Hye E. Park, Alexia Rattazzi, Melanie Ring, Reetabrata Roy, Amber Ruigrok, Nancy Sadka, Diana Schendel, Liezl Schlebusch, Alison Singer, Tanya St. John, Wendy L. Stone, Helen Tager-Flusberg, Carol Taylor, Julian Tillmann and the AIMS-2-TRIALS Consortium, Theodore S. Tomeny, Danielle Toth, Katy Unwin, Vivek Vajaratkar, Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele, Marisa Viljoen, Heather Volk, Susan W. White, Andrew J. O. Whitehouse, Christine Wu Nordahl, Yuichiro Yoshikawa Last year around this time, in preparation for the INSAR2019 meeting in Montreal, we asked members of the Autism Research editorial board as well as the Associate Editors to write short comments on what they considered to be the major gaps in autism research. The resulting Commentary was well received with nearly 3000 downloads. The INSAR meeting scheduled for Seattle in 2020 was, of course, cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. 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Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2020 · doi:10.1002/aur.2329