Early Behavioral Development in Autistic Children: The First 2 Years of Life through Home Movies

Abstract

Objective: The main aim of the research is to study the early behavioral development in autistic children through home movies. Methods: fifteen home movies, regarding the first 2 years of life of autistic children are compared with the home movies of 15 normal children. The films of the two groups were mixed and rated by blind ratings with the Grid for the Assessment of Normal Behavior in Infants and Toddlers. The grid is composed of 17 items grouped into three developmental areas: social competence, intersubjectivity and symbolic activity. For every area, we have identified specific children’s behaviors. Results: Significant differences between the two groups are found both in the range of age 0–6 for intersubjectivity, and in the ranges of age 6–12 and 18–24 for symbolic activity. Conclusions: The authors pose some hypotheses about an early-appearing impairment of intersubjectivity, the ability to represent other’s state of mind, in subjects with autistic disorder.

Screening for Autism Spectrum Disorders in Flemish Day-Care Centres with the Checklist for Early Signs of Developmental Disorders

“…Items regarding joint attention were also found to be highly discriminative in other screening instruments such as the M-CHAT (Robins et al, 2001). Moreover, home video studies found joint attention to be one of the most important early signs of ASD in infants or toddlers (Mars et al, 1998;Maestro et al, 2001). "Lack of symbolic play" also had a high discriminative power.…”

“…We performed a literature review on retrospective, prospective and home movie research on red flags of ASD in infants and toddlers (Adrien et al, 1991(Adrien et al, , 1993Baranek, 1999;Eaves & Ho, 2004;Gillberg et al, 1990;Gray & Tonge, 2001;Lord, 1995;Mars, Mauk, & Dorwick, 1998;Maestro, Casella, Milone, Muratori, & Palacio-Espasa, 1999;Maestro et al, 2001;Osterling & Dawson, 1994;Osterling, Dawson, & Munson, 2002;Werner, Dawson, Osterling, & Dinno, 2000;Wetherby et al, 2004;Wimpory, Hobson, Williams, & Nash, 2000;Zwaigenbaum et al, 2005). Unpublished findings of home movie research of our own research group were also included.…”

What can autism teach us about the role of sensorimotor systems in higher cognition? New clues from studies on language, action semantics, and abstract emotional concept processing

“…These speak of deficits such as in handwriting (Kushki, Chau, & Anagnostou, 2011) and (relatedly) fine-precision grip (David, Baranek, Wiesen, Miao, & Thorpe, 2012); in postural stability (Molloy, Dietrich, & Bhattacharya, 2003) and as documented in the studies above, gait (Esposito & Venuti, 2008;VernazzaMartin et al, 2005;Vilensky, Damasio, & Maurer, 1981); of akinesia, dyskinesia and bradykinesia (Damasio & Maurer,6 Motor symptoms are not the only symptoms that appear in the first year of life; we refer the interested reader to several other papers which point out early abnormalities in social orientation among other symptoms in the first year of life (Clifford & Dissanayake, 2008;Clifford et al, 2013;Clifford, Young, & Williamson, 2007;Dawson et al, 2004;Maestro, Muratori, Barbieri et al, 2001; 1978; Maurer & Damasio, 1982); and finally of hand dystonia and facial grimacing (Wing, 1981).…”

Environmental Factors in the Aetiology of Autism – Lessons from Animals Prenatally Exposed to Valproic Acid

“…This was confirmed by studies using home videos from the first two years of life of children later diagnosed with psychoses. Video recordings from children's natural environment showed fewer age appropriate behaviours in this group (Rosenthal et al, 1980) especially aberrant social attention (e.g., looking at people) and social behaviour (e.g., smiling at people and vocalizing to people), while most measures related to objects (e.g., looking at objects and smiling at objects) did not differ from control subjects in the first six months of life (Maestro et al, 2001). Better controlled studies of movies from the first birthday parties showed that most children later diagnosed with autism can be distinguished from controls at one year of age by such anomalies as failure to point to objects and failure to respond to their name (Osterling & Dawson, 1994).…”