RESUMEN

Processing facial features is crucial to identify social partners (prey, predators, or conspecifics) and recognize and accurately interpret emotional expressions. Numerous studies in both human and non-human primates provided evidence promoting the notion of inherent mechanisms for detecting facial features. These mechanisms support a representation of faces independent of prior experiences and are vital for subsequent development in social and language domains. Moreover, deficits in processing faces are a reliable biomarker of autism spectrum disorder, appearing early and correlating with symptom severity. Face processing, however, is not only a prerogative of humans: other species also show remarkable face detection abilities. In this review, we present an overview of the current literature on face detection in vertebrate models that could be relevant to the study of autism.

RESUMEN

BACKGROUND: Cross-neurotype differences in social communication patterns contribute to high unemployment rates among adults with autism. Adults with autism can be unsuccessful in job searches or terminated from employment due to mismatches between their social attention behaviors and society's expectations on workplace communication. OBJECTIVE: We propose a behavioral intervention concerning distribution of attention in triadic (three-way) conversations. Specifically, the objective is to determine whether providing personalized feedback to each individual with autism based on an analysis of their attention distribution behavior during an initial conversation session would cause them to modify their orientation behavior in a subsequent conversation session. METHODS: Our system uses an unobtrusive head orientation estimation model to track the focus of attention of each individual. Head orientation sequences from a conversation session are analyzed based on five statistical domains (eg, maximum exclusion duration and average contact duration) representing different types of attention distribution behavior. An intervention is provided to a participant if they exceeded the nonautistic average for that behavior by at least 2 SDs. The intervention uses data analysis and video modeling along with a constructive discussion about the targeted behaviors. Twenty-four individuals with autism with no intellectual disabilities participated in the study. The participants were divided into test and control groups of 12 participants each. RESULTS: Based on their attention distribution behavior in the initial conversation session, 11 of the 12 participants in the test group received an intervention in at least one domain. Of the 11 participants who received the intervention, 10 showed improvement in at least one domain on which they received feedback. Independent t tests for larger test groups (df>15) confirmed that the group improvements are statistically significant compared with the corresponding controls (P<.05). Crawford-Howell t tests confirmed that 78% of the interventions resulted in significant improvements when compared individually against corresponding controls (P<.05). Additional t tests comparing the first conversation sessions of the test and control groups and comparing the first and second conversation sessions of the control group resulted in nonsignificant differences, pointing to the intervention being the main effect behind the behavioral changes displayed by the test group, as opposed to confounding effects or group differences. CONCLUSIONS: Our proposed behavioral intervention offers a useful framework for practicing social attention behavior in multiparty conversations that are common in social and professional settings.

RESUMEN

The fuzzy nature of categories of psychopathology, such as autism, leads to significant research challenges. Alternatively, focusing research on the study of a common set of important and well-defined psychological constructs across psychiatric conditions may make the fundamental etiological processes of psychopathology easier to discern and treat (Cuthbert, 2022). The development of the research domain criteria (RDoC) framework is designed to guide this new research approach (Insel et al., 2010). However, progress in research may be expected to continually refine and reorganize the understanding of the specifics of these mental processes (Cuthbert & Insel, 2013). Moreover, knowledge gleaned from the study of both normative and atypical development can be mutually informative in the evolution of our understanding of these fundamental processes. A case in point is the study of social attention. This Autism 101 commentary provides an educational summary of research over the last few decades indicates that social attention is major construct in the study of human social-cognitive development, autism and other forms of psychopathology. The commentary also describes how this research can inform the Social Process dimension of the RDoC framework.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic condition associated with high sociability, intellectual disability, and social cognitive challenges. Attention to others' eyes is crucial for social understanding. Orienting to, and from other's eyes was studied in WS (n = 37, mean age = 23, age range 9-53). The WS group was compared to a typically developing comparison participants (n = 167) in stratified age groups from infancy to adulthood. Typically developing children and adults were quicker and more likely to orient to eyes than the mouth. This bias was absent in WS. The WS group had reduced peak saccadic velocities, indicating hypo-arousal. The current study indicates reduced orienting to others' eyes in WS, which may affect social interaction skills.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

BACKGROUND: A central challenge in preclinical research investigating the biology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the translation of ASD-related social phenotypes across humans and animal models. Social orienting, an observable, evolutionarily conserved behavior, represents a promising cross-species ASD phenotype given that disrupted social orienting is an early-emerging ASD feature with evidence for predicting familial recurrence. Here, we adapt a competing-stimulus social orienting task from domesticated dogs to naturalistic play behavior in human toddlers and test whether this approach indexes decreased social orienting in ASD. METHODS: Play behavior was coded from the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) in two samples of toddlers, each with and without ASD. Sample 1 (n = 16) consisted of community-ascertained research participants, while Sample 2 involved a prospective study of infants at a high or low familial liability for ASD (n = 67). Coding quantified the child's looks towards the experimenter and caregiver, a social stimulus, while playing with high-interest toys, a non-social stimulus. A competing-stimulus measure of "Social Attention During Object Engagement" (SADOE) was calculated by dividing the number of social looks by total time spent playing with toys. SADOE was compared based on ASD diagnosis and differing familial liability for ASD. RESULTS: In both samples, toddlers with ASD exhibited significantly lower SADOE compared to toddlers without ASD, with large effect sizes (Hedges' g ≥ 0.92) driven by a lower frequency of child-initiated spontaneous looks. Among toddlers at high familial likelihood of ASD, toddlers with ASD showed lower SADOE than toddlers without ASD, while SADOE did not differ based on presence or absence of familial ASD risk alone. SADOE correlated negatively with ADOS social affect calibrated severity scores and positively with the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales social subscale. In a binary logistic regression model, SADOE alone correctly classified 74.1% of cases, which rose to 85.2% when combined with cognitive development. CONCLUSIONS: This work suggests that a brief behavioral measure pitting a high-interest nonsocial stimulus against the innate draw of social partners can serve as a feasible cross-species measure of social orienting, with implications for genetically informative behavioral phenotyping of social deficits in ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

INTRODUCTION: There are limited data on the interrelationships among pragmatic skills and expressive vocabulary and their contribution to later social communication. Understanding these relationships could inform developmental processes and early intervention strategies. This study explored the relationship among pragmatics skills (i.e., communicative intents and responding to parents' preceding utterances) and concurrent expressive vocabulary as well as the predictive nature of these skills on later social communication in young autistic children with language and cognitive delays. METHOD: Data from 56 autistic children (age 18-57 months) who participated in a larger randomized control trial of Pathways Early Autism Intervention were used in this secondary analysis. Video recordings of pre-intervention (Time 1) parent-child interactions were analyzed for number of different words (NDW; expressive vocabulary), number of different (ND) communicative intents, and response to parents' preceding utterances. Residual scores from an assessment of social communication were used to measure Time 2 social communication. First-order correlations and hierarchical regression were used for analyses. RESULTS: Adjusting for age and receptive language, both ND communicative intents and response to parents' preceding utterances were associated with pre-intervention NDW. Further, adjusting for receptive language age and intervention group, NDW and response to parents' preceding utterances - but not ND communicative intents-was related to Time 2 social communication. NDW, however, was no longer related to Time 2 social communication skills after accounting for response to parents' preceding utterances. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence that autistic children with language and cognitive delays use their expressive vocabularies to respond, hence allocating attention to parent speech, a rudimentary form of social orienting. Our results support approaches to intervention that leverage responding as a rudimentary form of social orienting while encouraging more mature forms of social attention (i.e., social orienting to faces and joint attention) within developmentally appropriate activities, such as routines.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Caregiver touch is crucial for infants' healthy development, but its role in shaping infant cognition has been relatively understudied. In particular, despite strong premises to hypothesize its function in directing infant attention to social information, little empirical evidence exists on the topic. In this study, we investigated the associations between naturally occurring variation in caregiver touch and infant social attention in a group of 6- to 13-month-old infants (n = 71). Additionally, we measured infant salivary oxytocin as a possible mediator of the effects of touch on infant social attention. The hypothesized effects were investigated both short term, with respect to touch observed during parent-infant interactions in the lab, and long term, with respect to parent-reported patterns of everyday touching behaviors. We did not find evidence that caregiver touch predicts infant social attention or salivary oxytocin levels, short term or long term. However, we found that salivary oxytocin predicted infant preferential attention to faces relative to nonsocial objects, measured in an eye-tracking task. Our findings confirm the involvement of oxytocin in social orienting in infancy, but raise questions regarding the possible environmental factors influencing the infant oxytocin system.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

According to the Social Motivation model children with autism show deficits in social orienting (looking at faces and responding to name) at the end of their first year of life. In this model, those deficits are both the earliest behavioral consequences of an alteration in the dopamine reward system balance and the foundation of the social impairments that characterize this neurodevelopmental disorder. The current study tests two of the main predictions of this model: that social orienting deficits are the first behavioral manifestation of autism, and that they are developmentally related to joint attention deficits. We retrospectively analyzed family home movies of 9- to 12-month-old infants, 29 of whom were later diagnosed with autism and 16 of whom were typically developing. After confirming that the videotapes of both groups were similar in content of the scenes recorded (contexts, type of social activity, etc.), we compared their social orienting (social gaze and responding to name) and joint attention behaviors (gaze alternation and gestures). No significant differences between groups were found in looking at faces, but the group with autism showed deficits in responding to name and initiations of joint attention (IJA). Looking at people was not significantly correlated with IJA behaviors, but response to name was. The lack of group differences in looking at faces between 9 and 12 months, and the existence of IJA difficulties in the ASD group without concurrent impairment in looking at faces, do not support predictions of the Social Motivation model. LAY SUMMARY: Various theories have been proposed to explain the emergence of autism symptoms early in life. This study tested two key predictions of the Social Motivation model. Comparing family movies of children 9- to 12-months-old later diagnosed with autism or with typical development, we did not observe difficulties in looking at other people's faces but children with autism responded to name and used gaze and gestures to direct the adult's attention to events of interest less frequently. This absence of difficulties in looking at faces does not fit with what the Social Motivation model of autism predicts and therefore we must develop alternative explanations.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

OBJECTIVE: About 1:650-1,000 children are born with an extra X or Y chromosome (XXX; XXY; XYY), which results in a sex chromosome trisomy (SCT). This study aims to cross-sectionally investigate the impact of SCT on early social cognitive skills. Basic orienting toward social cues, joint attention, and theory of mind (ToM) in young children with SCT were evaluated. METHOD: About 105 children with SCT (range: 1-7 years old) were included in this study, as well as 96 age-matched nonclinical controls. Eyetracking paradigms were used to investigate the eye gaze patterns indicative of joint attention skills and orienting to social interactions. The ToM abilities were measured using the subtest ToM of the Developmental NEuroPSYchological Assessment, second edition, neuropsychological test battery. Recruitment and assessment took place in the Netherlands and in the United States. RESULTS: Eyetracking results revealed difficulties in children with SCT in social orienting. These difficulties were more pronounced in children aged 3 years and older, and in boys with 47,XYY. Difficulties in joint attention were found over all age groups and karyotypes. Children with SCT showed impairments in ToM (26.3% in the [well] below expected level), increasing with age. These impairments did not differ between karyotypes. CONCLUSIONS: An impact of SCT on social cognitive abilities was found already at an early age, indicating the need for early monitoring and support of early social cognition. Future research should explore the longitudinal trajectories of social development in order to evaluate the predictive relationships between social cognition and outcome later in life in terms of social functioning and the risk for psychopathology.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Differences in social attention development begin to be apparent in the 6th to 12th month of development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and theoretically reflect important elements of its neurodevelopmental endophenotype. This paper examines alternative conceptual views of these early social attention symptoms and hypotheses about the mechanisms involved in their development. One model emphasizes mechanism involved in the spontaneous allocation of attention to faces, or social orienting. Alternatively, another model emphasizes mechanisms involved in the coordination of attention with other people, or joint attention, and the socially bi-directional nature of its development. This model raises the possibility that atypical responses of children to the attention or the gaze of a social partner directed toward themselves may be as important in the development of social attention symptoms as differences in the development of social orienting. Another model holds that symptoms of social attention may be important to early development, but may not impact older individuals with ASD. The alterative model is that the social attention symptoms in infancy (social orienting and joint attention), and social cognitive symptoms in childhood and adulthood share common neurodevelopmental substrates. Therefore, differences in early social attention and later social cognition constitute a developmentally continuous axis of symptom presentation in ASD. However, symptoms in older individuals may be best measured with in vivo measures of efficiency of social attention and social cognition in social interactions rather than the accuracy of response on analog tests used in measures with younger children. Finally, a third model suggests that the social attention symptoms may not truly be a symptom of ASD. Rather, they may be best conceptualized as stemming from differences domain general attention and motivation mechanisms. The alternative argued for here that infant social attention symptoms meet all the criteria of a unique dimension of the phenotype of ASD and the bi-directional phenomena involved in social attention cannot be fully explained in terms of domain general aspects of attention development.

RESUMEN

Social motivation accounts of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) posit that individuals with ASD find social stimuli less rewarding than neurotypical (NT) individuals. Behaviorally, this is proposed to manifest in reduced social orienting (individuals with ASD direct less attention towards social stimuli) and reduced social seeking (individuals with ASD invest less effort to receive social stimuli). In two meta-analyses, involving data from over 6000 participants, we review the available behavioral studies that assess social orienting and social seeking behaviors in ASD. We found robust evidence for reduced social orienting in ASD, across a range of paradigms, demographic variables and stimulus contexts. The most robust predictor of this effect was interactive content - effects were larger when the stimulus involved an interaction between people. By contrast, the evidence for reduced social seeking indicated weaker evidence for group differences, observed only under specific experimental conditions. The insights gained from this meta-analysis can inform design of relevant task measures for social reward responsivity and promote directions for further study on the ASD phenotype.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

This study aims to identify predictors of treatment outcome in young children with ASD within a European context, where service provision of intervention remains sporadic. We investigated whether a child's age at baseline, intensity of the intervention provided, type of intervention, child's level of social orienting and cognitive skills at baseline predicted changes in autistic symptoms and cognitive development after 1 year of intervention, in a sample of 60 children with ASD. Our results strongly support early and intensive intervention. We also observed that lower cognitive skills at baseline were related to greater cognitive gains. Finally, we show that a child's interest in social stimuli may contribute to intervention outcome.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Multimodal communication may facilitate attention in infants. This study examined the presentation of caregiver touch-only and touch + speech input to 12-month-olds at high (HRA) and low risk for ASD. Findings indicated that, although both groups received a greater number of touch + speech bouts compared to touch-only bouts, the duration of overall touch that overlapped with speech was significantly greater in the HRA group. Additionally, HRA infants were less responsive to touch-only bouts compared to touch + speech bouts suggesting that their mothers may use more touch + speech communication to elicit infant responses. Nonetheless, the exact role of touch in multimodal communication directed towards infants at high risk for ASD warrants further exploration.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Atypical response to tactile input is associated with greater socio-communicative impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study examined overt orienting to caregiver-initiated touch in 12-month-olds at high risk for ASD (HRA) with (HRA+) and without (HRA-) a later diagnosis of ASD compared to low-risk comparison infants. Findings indicate that infants that go on to receive a diagnosis of ASD may more frequently fail to shift their attention in response to caregiver touch and when they do, they may be more likely to orient away from touch. Additionally, failure to respond to touch predicts ADOS severity scores at outcome suggesting that atypical response to touch may be an early indicator of autism severity.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) represents a group of neurodevelopmental disabilities that can be difficult to identify before the age of 2 or 3 years, the age when the full range of behavioral symptoms has emerged in most cases. Initiation of joint attention is an important developmental function in which impairments are already observable before the second birthday and can predict children's ASD symptomatology. In the first part of this review, we summarize results pertaining to retrospective studies of initiation of joint attention in children with ASD and prospective studies of infants at high risk for ASD during the first 2 years, when this behavior is becoming more complex in terms of frequency, quality, and variety. We will also discuss the implications of impairments in dyadic engagement, a precursor of joint attention behavior, for the early development of joint attention. Finally, the early development of initiation of joint attention has been related to specific visual attention mechanisms such as social orienting and visual disengagement. In the second part of this review, we provide an overview of the relationship between those visual attention mechanisms and subsequent social-communication impairments. Clinical and research implications of these findings for both early detection and early intervention will be discussed.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

According to the social motivation theory, orienting toward social elements of the environment should be related to sociocognitive abilities, such as theory of mind (ToM), in both typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder. The objective of the current study was to assess whether social orienting skills predict ToM abilities in preschoolers by using two social orienting tasks (biological motion and face preference) and an implicit false belief task. A total of 38 children, aged 2-4 years, participated in this study. As expected, participants showed a social preference on both tasks measuring social orienting. More importantly, children's performance on the face preference task predicted their performance on the false belief task, providing the first evidence for a link between social motivation and ToM in preschoolers.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Human actions induce attentional orienting toward the target of the action. We examined the influence of action cueing in social (man throwing toward a human) and non-social (man throwing toward a tree) contexts in observers with and without autism spectrum condition (ASC). Results suggested that a social interaction enhanced the cueing effect for neurotypical participants. Participants with ASC did not benefit from non-predictive cues and were slower in social contexts, although they benefitted from reliably predictive cues. Social orienting appears to be automatic in the context of an implied social interaction for neurotypical observers, but not those with ASC. Neurotypical participants' behavior may be driven by automatic processing, while participants with ASC use an alternative, effortful strategy.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Several accounts have been proposed to explain difficulties with social interaction in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), amongst which atypical social orienting, decreased social motivation or difficulties with understanding the regularities driving social interaction. This study uses gaze-contingent eye-tracking to tease apart these accounts by measuring reward related behaviours in response to different social videos. Toddlers at high or low familial risk for ASD took part in this study at age 2 and were categorised at age 3 as low risk controls (LR), high-risk with no ASD diagnosis (HR-no ASD), or with a diagnosis of ASD (HR-ASD). When the on-demand social interaction was predictable, all groups, including the HR-ASD group, looked longer and smiled more towards a person greeting them compared to a mechanical Toy (Condition 1) and also smiled more towards a communicative over a non-communicative person (Condition 2). However, all groups, except the HR-ASD group, selectively oriented towards a person addressing the child in different ways over an invariant social interaction (Condition 3). These findings suggest that social interaction is intrinsically rewarding for individuals with ASD, but the extent to which it is sought may be modulated by the specific variability of naturalistic social interaction.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

According to the social motivation theory of autism, children who develop Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have early deficits in social motivation, which is expressed by decreased attention to social information. These deficits are said to lead to impaired socio-cognitive development, such as theory of mind (ToM). There is little research focused on the relation between social motivation and ToM in this population. The goal of the present study was to investigate the link between one aspect of social motivation, social orienting, and ToM in preschoolers with ASD. It was expected that, in contrast to typically developing (TD) children, children with ASD would show impaired performance on tasks measuring social orienting and ToM. It was also expected that children's performance on the social orienting tasks would be correlated with their performance on the ToM task. A total of 17 children with ASD and 16 TD children participated in this study. Participants completed two social orienting tasks, a face preference task and a biological motion preference task, as well an implicit false belief task. Results reveal that TD children, but not children with ASD, exhibited social preference as measured by a preference for faces and biological motion. Furthermore, children with ASD tended to perform worse on the ToM task compared to their TD counterparts. Performance on the social motivation tasks and the ToM task tended to be related but only for the TD children. These findings suggest that ToM is multifaceted and that motivational deficits might have downstream effects even on implicit ToM. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1834-1844. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: The goal of the present study was to examine the link between poor attention to social information and mindreading abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Results demonstrated that children with ASD tended to perform worse than neurotypical children on both social orienting and theory of mind tasks. Preference for human faces and motion tended to be related but only for the neurotypical children. These findings provide partial support for the social motivation theory.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

To evaluate the efficacy of the Social ABCs parent-mediated intervention for toddlers with suspected or confirmed autism spectrum disorder (ASD), through a cross-site randomized control trial, sixty-three parent-toddler dyads (toddler age: 16-30 months) were randomized into treatment (Social ABCs) or control (service-as-usual) conditions. Video data were obtained at three key time-points: Baseline; Post-training (PT; week 12); and Follow-Up (week 24). Analyses included 62 dyads. Treatment allocation significantly accounted for PT gains, all favouring the Treatment group, in (1) child functional vocal responsiveness to parent prompts (R2 = 0.43, P < .001), (2) child vocal initiations (R2 = 0.28, P < .001), (3) parent smiling (R2 = 0.09, P = .017), and (4) fidelity of implementation (R2 = 0.71, P < .001). A trend was observed for increased social orienting (R2 = 0.06, P = 0.054); gains in parent smiling significantly predicted increases in child smiling and social orienting. Parents in the treatment condition reported significant gains in self-efficacy following the intervention (P = 0.009). No differential effects emerged for performance on standardized measures. The Social ABCs is a relatively low-resource, efficacious intervention, with potential to be a cost-effective means of intervening at the first signs of possible ASD. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1700-1711. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Clinical Trial Title: Social ABCs for Toddlers with Signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder: RCT of a Parent-Mediated Intervention http//ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02428452.

Asunto(s)