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Interrelations among social-cognitive skills in young children with autism
Malinda Carpenter1, Bruce F Pennington, Sally J Rogers
1Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. carpenter@eva.mpg.de
Insights
Children with autism show unique social-cognitive skill development, with attention-based tasks being more challenging than behavior-based ones. However, the typical developmental progression of sharing, following, and directing attention and behavior is still observed.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Clinical psychology
- Neurodevelopmental disorders
Background:
- Typically developing infants demonstrate a predictable sequence in acquiring social-cognitive skills like joint attention and imitation.
- These skills are foundational for communication and social interaction.
- Understanding these developmental patterns is crucial for identifying and supporting developmental delays.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the interrelations among social-cognitive skills in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other developmental delays.
- To compare the developmental trajectories of these skills in children with ASD versus other developmental conditions.
- To examine the specific challenges children with ASD face in attention- versus behavior-related social-cognitive tasks.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a series of established tests assessing social-cognitive skills in infants (Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998).
- Included assessments for object permanence, spatial relations, imitation (facial and manual), and executive function.
- Compared performance patterns between children with autism and those with other developmental delays.
Main Results:
- Children with autism, more than other groups, found tasks involving shared attention more difficult than those involving behavior.
- Despite attention-based challenges, the typical developmental sequence (sharing, following, directing) was evident in both attention and behavior domains for most children with autism.
- Positive intercorrelations were found among social-cognitive skills, similar to typically developing infants, but individual differences in patterns were also noted.
Conclusions:
- Social-cognitive skill development in autism presents distinct challenges, particularly in attention-related tasks.
- The fundamental developmental progression of social-cognitive skills may be preserved even with significant delays or differences in autism.
- Findings have implications for refining theories of social-cognitive development and language acquisition in neurodevelopmental disorders.
Abstract:
Typically developing infants show a reliable developmental sequence of emergence of early social-cognitive skills, such as joint attention, communicative gestures, gaze and point following, imitation, and referential language. First infants share others' attention, then they follow others' attention and then behavior, and then they direct others' attention and then behavior. The current study used a series of tests from a study of typically developing infants (Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998) to investigate interrelations among these social-cognitive skills in young children with autism and children with other developmental delays. Tests of object permanence, spatial relations, facial and manual imitation, and executive function also were included. We found that for most children with autism, unlike other children, tests involving others' attention were more difficult than tests involving others' behavior. However, within the domains of attention and behavior, the typical pattern of sharing, then following, and then directing was evident. There were several positive intercorrelations among the social-cognitive skills (as there were for typically developing infants), but there also was some evidence of individual differences in patterns. Implications for theories of social-cognitive and language development are discussed.