The development of early social cognitive skills in neurogenetic syndromes associated with autism: Cornelia de Lange, fragile X and Rubinstein–Taybi syndromes

Abstract Background Cornelia de Lange (CdLS), Fragile X (FXS) and Rubinstein–Taybi syndromes (RTS) evidence unique profiles of autistic characteristics. To delineate these profiles further, the development of early social cognitive abilities in children with CdLS, FXS and RTS was compared to that observed in typically developing (TD) and autistic (AUT) children. Methods Children with CdLS (N = 22), FXS (N = 19) and RTS (N = 18), completed the Early Social Cognition Scale (ESCogS). Extant data from AUT (N = 19) and TD (N = 86) children were used for comparison. Results Similar to AUT children, children with CdLS, FXS and RTS showed an overall delay in passing ESCogS tasks. Children with CdLS showed a similar degree of delay to AUT children and greater delay than children with FXS and RTS. The CdLS, FXS and RTS groups did not pass tasks in the same sequence observed in TD and AUT children. Children with CdLS (p = 0.04), FXS (p = 0.02) and RTS (p = 0.04) performed better on tasks requiring understanding simple intentions in others significantly more than tasks requiring joint attention skills. Conclusions An underlying mechanism other than general cognitive delay may be disrupting early social cognitive development in children with CdLS, FXS and RTS. Factors that may disrupt early social cognitive development within these syndromes are discussed.

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Predictive context biases binocular rivalry in children and adults with no positive relation to two measures of social cognition

10.31234/osf.io/qkjty ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Christian Valuch ◽

Louisa Kulke

Keyword(s):

Theory Of Mind ◽

Binocular Rivalry ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Cognitive Skills ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Contextual Information ◽

Positive Association ◽

Similar Degree ◽

Eye Dominance ◽

Adult Participants

Integration of prior experience and contextual information can help to resolve perceptually ambiguous situations and might support the ability to understand other peoples’ thoughts and intentions, called Theory of Mind. We studied whether the readiness to incorporate contextual information for resolving binocular rivalry is positively associated with Theory-of-Mind-related social cognitive abilities. In children (12 to 13 years) and adults (18 to 25 years), a predictive temporal context reliably modulated the onset of binocular rivalry to a similar degree. In contrast, adult participants scored better on measures of Theory of Mind compared to children. We observed considerable interindividual differences regarding the influence of a predictive context on binocular rivalry, which were associated with differences in sensory eye dominance. The absence of a positive association between predictive effects on perception and Theory of Mind performance suggests that predictive effects on binocular rivalry and higher-level Theory-of-Mind-related abilities stem from different neurocognitive mechanisms. We conclude that the influence of predictive contextual information on basic visual processes is fully developed at an earlier age, whereas social cognitive skills continue to evolve from adolescence to adulthood.

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Two sources of meaning in infant communication: preceding action contexts and act-accompanying characteristics

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2013.0294 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 369 (1651) ◽

pp. 20130294 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Ulf Liszkowski

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Development ◽

Cognitive Skills ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Social Experience ◽

First Year ◽

Social Cognitive Development ◽

Communicative Act ◽

First Year Of Life ◽

Multisensory Information

How do infants communicate before they have acquired a language? This paper supports the hypothesis that infants possess social–cognitive skills that run deeper than language alone, enabling them to understand others and make themselves understood. I suggested that infants, like adults, use two sources of extralinguistic information to communicate meaningfully and react to and express communicative intentions appropriately. In support, a review of relevant experiments demonstrates, first, that infants use information from preceding shared activities to tailor their comprehension and production of communication. Second, a series of novel findings from our laboratory shows that in the absence of distinguishing information from preceding routines or activities, infants use accompanying characteristics (such as prosody and posture) that mark communicative intentions to extract and transmit meaning. Findings reveal that before infants begin to speak they communicate in meaningful ways by binding preceding and simultaneous multisensory information to a communicative act. These skills are not only a precursor to language, but also an outcome of social–cognitive development and social experience in the first year of life.

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