This Webinar will take place on Friday, March 18th from 4:00PM to 5:00PM Eastern Standard Time. The visual portion of the webinar will be conducted via GoToMeeting and the audio portion via telephone or VoIP (requires microphone and speakers). After registration you will be given a unique web address for viewing the webinar and audio information.

About the Webinar:
Because there is not yet a biological test that indicates autism, these diagnoses must be based on the observations of clinicians and the reports of caregivers and teachers. Due to the variability in ASDs, inexperienced or ill-informed clinicians can make incorrect diagnoses, which can cause hardship for families and significant cost to children and adults with and without ASD. In addition, research to determine causes and effective treatments for ASD is dependent on being able to compare groups of children or adults with ASD across different studies. If participants are chosen whose diagnoses are based on different information, results may be impossible to interpret. This presentation will address how research in ASD has attempted to address these issues by moving in several different directions, using the newly-proposed DSM-5 criteria as a framework