Decreased Spontaneous Attention to Social Scenes in 6-Month-Old Infants Later Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

Background The ability to spontaneously attend to the social overtures and activities of others is essential for the development of social cognition and communication. This ability is critically impaired in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD); however, it is not clear if prodromal symptoms in this area are already present in the first year of life of those affected by the disorder. Methods To examine whether 6-month-old infants later diagnosed with ASD exhibit atypical spontaneous social monitoring skills, visual responses of 67 infants at high-risk (HR) and 50 at low-risk (LR) for ASD were studied using an eye-tracking task. Based on their clinical presentation in the 3rd year, infants were divided into those with ASD, those exhibiting atypical development (HR-ATYP), and those developing typically (HR-TYP, LR-TYP). Results Compared to the control groups, 6-month-old infants later diagnosed with ASD attended less to the social scene, and, when they did look at the scene, they spent less time monitoring the actress in general and her face in particular. Limited attention to the actress and her activities was not accompanied by enhanced attention to objects. Conclusions Prodromal symptoms of ASD at six months include a diminished ability to attend spontaneously to people and their activities. A limited attentional bias towards people early in development is likely to have a detrimental impact on the specialization of social brain networks and the emergence of social interaction patterns. Further investigation into its underlying mechanisms and role in psychopathology of ASD in the first year is warranted.

A Wearable Camera Detects Gaze Peculiarities during Social Interactions in Young Children with Pervasive Developmental Disorders

“…To our knowledge, only a few studies quantitatively compare attention to stimuli of different social complexity in autism spectrum disorders in real-life settings (e.g., by analyzing retrospective home videos). Note that our results agree with the recent eye-tracking studies conducted in semi-naturalistic settings by Chawarska et al [54] and Shic et al [55]. Both studies reported that children with ASD looked proportionally less time at an actor's face, when the actor was speaking, than TD children and children with developmental delays.…”

“…They observe that people with autism orient to social sound less than to non-social sounds. Recently, Chawarska et al [54] conducted a semi-naturalistic eye-tracking study that involved children with ASD (n = 54, mean age = 1.8 years), TD children (n = 48, mean age = 1.7 years) and children with developmental delays (n = 20, mean age = 1.7 years), matched on verbal and non-verbal mental age. Chawarska et al compared the gaze behaviours towards faces.…”

Preterm birth is associated with atypical social orienting in infancy detected using eye tracking

“…In the developmental trajectory of social cognition visual attention is given to faces very soon after birth, with specific attention paid to the eye region; and later in infancy at around 6-9 months a preference for looking at faces within multiple object arrays or animated scenes develops (Johnson, Dziurawiec, Ellis, & Morton, 1991;Farroni, Csibra, Simion, & Johnson, 2002;Gliga, Elsabbagh, Andravizou, & Johnson, 2009;Frank, Vul, & Johnson, 2009); for review see . This trajectory is altered from 2 to 12 months in children who go on to receive a diagnosis of ASD, which suggests that gaze behaviour may be one of the earliest markers of atypical social cognition (Young, Merin, Rogers, & Ozonoff, 2009;Ozonoff et al, 2010;Chawarska, Macari, & Shic, 2012;Jones & Klin, 2013;Chawarska, Macari, & Shic, 2013;Wass et al, 2015).…”

Multiple Measures of Fixation on Social Content in Infancy: Evidence for a Single Social Cognitive Construct?

“…However, one interpretation of existing findings is that infants who later receive a diagnosis of ASD are more easily distracted by colorful objects in the background of a scene, or by specific stimulus properties such as audiovisual contingencies (Chawarska, Macari, & Shic, 2013; Klin, Lin, Gorrindo, Ramsay, & Jones, 2009). Thus, conflicting results from the literature on early signs of ASD may be partially explained by differences in stimulus and task design (Falck‐Ytter, Bolte, & Gredeback, 2013; Jones, Gliga, Bedford, Charman, & Johnson, 2014).…”