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Published on: July 31, 2016
Speech disturbs face scanning in 6-month-old infants who develop autism spectrum disorder
Frederick Shic1, Suzanne Macari1, Katarzyna Chawarska1
1Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.
Insights
Infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show atypical attention to social cues, particularly when speech is present. This suggests early attention regulation difficulties in ASD development.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Neuroscience
- Clinical psychology
Background:
- Infants naturally prefer social cues like faces and voices.
- In autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), these social attention biases may be disrupted.
- Atypical attention to social targets may emerge as early as 6 months in infants at risk for ASD.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate gaze patterns in 6-month-old infants at high and low risk for ASD.
- To compare attention to faces under different conditions (still, moving, speaking).
- To identify early behavioral markers associated with later ASD diagnosis.
Main Methods:
- Eye-tracking was used to record infant gaze patterns (n=99).
- Infants viewed still, moving, and speaking faces.
- Clinical outcomes were assessed at 3 years to compare infants with and without ASD.
Main Results:
- Infants later diagnosed with ASD generally spent less time viewing presented scenes.
- These infants showed reduced attention to inner facial features when the face was speaking.
- This effect was specific to the speaking condition, not still or moving faces.
Conclusions:
- Infants who develop ASD exhibit difficulties in regulating attention to complex social stimuli.
- Speech appears to uniquely disrupt the attention of infants who later develop ASD.
- These findings highlight a critical developmental period for attention in early ASD.
Background:
From birth, infants show a preference for the faces, gaze, and voices of others. In individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) these biases seem to be disturbed. The source of these disturbances is not well-understood, but recent efforts have shown that the spontaneous deployment of attention to social targets might be atypical as early as 6 months of age. The nature of this atypical behavior and the conditions under which it arises are currently unknown.
Methods:
We used eye-tracking to examine the gaze patterns of 6-month-old infants (n = 99) at high risk (n = 57) and low risk (n = 42) for developing ASD as they viewed faces that were: 1) still; 2) moving and expressing positive affect; or 3) speaking. Clinical outcomes were determined through a comprehensive assessment at the age of 3 years. The scanning patterns of infants later diagnosed with ASD were compared with infants without an ASD outcome.
Results:
Infants who later developed ASD spent less time looking at the presented scenes in general than other infants. When these infants looked at faces, their looking toward the inner features of faces decreased compared with the other groups only when the presented face was speaking.
Conclusions:
Our study suggests that infants later diagnosed with ASD have difficulties regulating attention to complex social scenes. It also suggests that the presence of speech might uniquely disturb the attention of infants who later develop ASD at a critical developmental point when other infants are acquiring language and learning about their social world.
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