The present study investigated whether autonomic arousal to direct gaze is related to social impairments among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Arousal was measured through skin conductance responses (SCR) while the participants (15 children with ASD and 16 control children) viewed a live face of another person. Impairments in social skills was assessed with the Developmental, Dimensional and Diagnostic Interview. The level of arousal enhancement to direct gaze in comparison to arousal to faces with averted gaze or closed eyes was positively associated with impairments in social skills (use of language and other social communication skills and use of gesture and non-verbal play) among children with ASD. There was no similar association among children without ASD. The role of arousal-related factors in influencing eye contact behaviour in ASD is discussed.
Maternal prenatal anxiety is associated with infants’ temperamental negative affectivity (NA), but it is unclear to what extent children vary in their susceptibility to prenatal influences. We tested a hypothesis that infants’ respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), an index of parasympathetic vagal tone and a potential marker of differential susceptibility to environmental influences, moderates the effects of maternal prenatal anxiety on the development of infant NA. Prenatal anxiety was assessed during the last trimester of pregnancy in a low‐risk community sample. Infant NA, baseline RSA, and maternal postnatal anxiety were assessed at 8–10 months of infant age. Regression analyses were performed to predict infant NA on the basis of prenatal anxiety, infant baseline RSA, and their interaction (N = 173). Maternal prenatal anxiety and infant RSA interactively predicted infant NA at 8–10 months. Among infants with high RSA, a significant positive association between prenatal anxiety and infant NA was observed, whereas prenatal anxiety did not predict infant NA among infants with low RSA. Vagal tone, as indexed by baseline RSA, may provide a promising marker of differential susceptibility to the long‐term effects of varying intrauterine conditions.
Fragmented sleep is common in infancy. Although night awakening is known to decrease with age, in some infants night awakening is more persistent and continues into older ages. However, the influence of fragmented sleep on development is poorly known. In the present study, the longitudinal relationship between fragmented sleep and psychomotor development (Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development [Bayley-III]; Bayley, 2009) was investigated in infants with (≥3 night awakenings, n = 81) and without fragmented sleep (≤1 night awakening, n = 70) within the CHILD-SLEEP birth cohort at 8 and 24 months of age. Differences in parent-reported (Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire [BISQ]) sleep parameters were studied at 8, 18, and 24 months of age. Group differences in night awakening were stable across all assessment points. Infants with fragmented sleep slept less in total than infants without fragmented sleep and they did not compensate their nocturnal sleep during daytime. Additionally, infants with fragmented sleep spent more time awake at night than infants without fragmented sleep. However, psychomotor development did not differ between infants with and without fragmented sleep at 8 or 24 months of age. Our findings indicate that early onset fragmented sleep did not have a negative effect on psychomotor development within the first 2 years despite the differences in sleep length among infants with and without fragmented sleep. In the future, more specific domains of cognitive development and various factors affecting sleep fragmentation should be taken into account when studying the developmental effects of night awakening in infancy. (PsycINFO Database Record
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