Reduced engagement with social stimuli in 6-month-old infants with later autism spectrum disorder: a longitudinal prospective study of infants at high familial risk

Abstract Objective Predictive testing for familial disorders can guide healthcare and reproductive decisions. Familial disorders with onset in childhood (e.g., autism spectrum disorder [ASD]) are promising targets for presymptomatic prediction; however, little is known about parent perceptions of risk to their children in the presymptomatic period. The current study examined risk perceptions in parents of infants at high familial risk for ASD enrolled in a longitudinal study of brain and behavior development. Methods Semistructured interviews were conducted with 37 parents of high-risk infants during the presymptomatic window (3–15 months) that precedes an ASD diagnosis. Infants were identified as high familial risk due to having an older sibling with ASD. Parent interview responses were coded and interpreted to distill emerging themes. Results The majority of parents were aware of the increased risk of ASD for their infants, and risk perceptions were influenced by comparisons to their older child with ASD. Parents reported a variety of negative emotions in response to perceived risk, including worry, fear, and sadness, and described impacts of perceived risk on their behavior: increased vigilance to emerging symptoms, altered reproductive and healthcare decisions, and seeking ongoing assessment through research. Conclusions Parents of children at high familial risk for childhood-onset disorders like ASD face a period of challenging uncertainty during early development. In anticipation of a future in which presymptomatic testing for ASD is made available, it is important to understand how parents react to and cope with the elevated—but still highly uncertain—risk conveyed by family history.

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Brief Report: Preferred Processing of Social Stimuli in Autism: A Perception Task

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders ◽

10.1007/s10803-021-05195-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

A. Meermeier ◽

M. Jording ◽

Y. Alayoubi ◽

David H. V. Vogel ◽

K. Vogeley ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Exploratory Analysis ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Social Stimuli ◽

Future Studies ◽

Perception Task ◽

Social Images

AbstractIn this study we investigate whether persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) perceive social images differently than control participants (CON) in a graded perception task in which stimuli emerged from noise before dissipating into noise again. We presented either social stimuli (humans) or non-social stimuli (objects or animals). ASD were slower to recognize images during their emergence, but as fast as CON when indicating the dissipation of the image irrespective of its content. Social stimuli were recognized faster and remained discernable longer in both diagnostic groups. Thus, ASD participants show a largely intact preference for the processing of social images. An exploratory analysis of response subsets reveals subtle differences between groups that could be investigated in future studies.

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Social Attention Deficits in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Task Dependence of Objects vs. Faces Observation Bias

Frontiers in Psychiatry ◽

10.3389/fpsyt.2021.640599 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Susana Mouga ◽

João Castelhano ◽

Cátia Café ◽

Daniela Sousa ◽

Frederico Duque ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Social Attention ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Attention Deficits ◽

Social Stimuli ◽

Task Dependence ◽

Observation Bias ◽

Autism Diagnostic Observation

Social attention deficits represent a central impairment of patients suffering from autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but the nature of such deficits remains controversial. We compared visual attention regarding social (faces) vs. non-social stimuli (objects), in an ecological diagnostic context, in 46 children and adolescents divided in two groups: ASD (N = 23) and typical neurodevelopment (TD) (N = 23), matched for chronological age and intellectual performance. Eye-tracking measures of visual scanning, while exploring and describing scenes from three different tasks from the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), were analyzed: “Description of a Picture,” “Cartoons,” and “Telling a Story from a Book.” Our analyses revealed a three-way interaction between Group, Task, and Social vs. Object Stimuli. We found a striking main effect of group and a task dependence of attentional allocation: while the TD attended first and longer to faces, ASD participants became similar to TD when they were asked to look at pictures while telling a story. Our results suggest that social attention allocation is task dependent, raising the question whether spontaneous attention deficits can be rescued by guiding goal-directed actions.

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Adaptation to Vocal Expressions and Phonemes Is Intact in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Clinical Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/2167702617748401 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 372-381

Author(s):

Patricia E. G. Bestelmeyer ◽

Bethan Williams ◽

Jennifer J. Lawton ◽

Maria-Elena Stefanou ◽

Kami Koldewyn ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Social Stimuli ◽

Adaptation Mechanism ◽

Identity Recognition ◽

Children With Asd ◽

The Social ◽

Vocal Expressions

Several recent studies have demonstrated reduced visual aftereffects, particularly to social stimuli, in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This putative impairment of the adaptive mechanism in ASD has been put forward as a possible explanation for some of the core social problems experienced by children with ASD (e.g., facial emotion or identity recognition). We addressed this claim in children with ASD and typically developing children by using an established methodology and morphed auditory stimulus set for eliciting robust aftereffects to vocal expressions and phonemes. Although children with ASD were significantly worse at categorizing the vocal expressions compared with the control stimuli (phoneme categorization), aftereffect sizes in both tasks were identical in the two participant groups. Our finding suggests that the adaptation mechanism is not universally impaired in ASD and is therefore not an explanation for the social perception difficulties in ASD.

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Action prediction in 10-month-old infants at high and low familial risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders ◽

10.1016/j.rasd.2018.02.004 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 49 ◽

pp. 34-46 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Ricarda Braukmann ◽

Emma Ward ◽

Roy S. Hessels ◽

Harold Bekkering ◽

Jan K. Buitelaar ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Familial Risk ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Action Prediction

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Children with autism spectrum disorder show reduced adaptation to number

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1504099112 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 112 (25) ◽

pp. 7868-7872 ◽

Cited By ~ 47

Author(s):

Marco Turi ◽

David C. Burr ◽

Roberta Igliozzi ◽

David Aagten-Murphy ◽

Filippo Muratori ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Strong Support ◽

Children With Autism ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Social Stimuli ◽

Numerosity Discrimination ◽

Facial Identity ◽

Large Numbers

Autism is known to be associated with major perceptual atypicalities. We have recently proposed a general model to account for these atypicalities in Bayesian terms, suggesting that autistic individuals underuse predictive information or priors. We tested this idea by measuring adaptation to numerosity stimuli in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). After exposure to large numbers of items, stimuli with fewer items appear to be less numerous (and vice versa). We found that children with ASD adapted much less to numerosity than typically developing children, although their precision for numerosity discrimination was similar to that of the typical group. This result reinforces recent findings showing reduced adaptation to facial identity in ASD and goes on to show that reduced adaptation is not unique to faces (social stimuli with special significance in autism), but occurs more generally, for both parietal and temporal functions, probably reflecting inefficiencies in the adaptive interpretation of sensory signals. These results provide strong support for the Bayesian theories of autism.

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