High-Risk Siblings without Autism: Insights from a Clinical and Eye-Tracking Study

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Joint attention (JA) is crucial for social development and is impaired in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
• Limited understanding exists regarding JA skills in high-risk (HR) siblings who do not develop ASD.
• Investigating these siblings offers insights into early social attention development and potential risk factors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine joint attention (JA) skills in toddlers with ASD, high-risk (HR) siblings without ASD, and typically developing (TD) controls.
• To characterize the visual attention patterns during initiating joint attention (IJA) tasks in these groups.
• To understand the social attention profile of HR-noASD toddlers.

Main Methods:

• A prospective multicenter observational study involving three groups: ASD, HR-noASD, and TD toddlers (18-33 months).
• Comprehensive clinical assessments and eye-tracking experiments using pre-recorded stimuli for IJA tasks.
• Analysis of visual patterns including fixations, transitions, and gaze alternations.

Main Results:

• HR-noASD toddlers showed lower non-verbal cognitive skills than TD children.
• Compared to ASD children, HR-noASD toddlers had similar restricted/repetitive behaviors but better social communication.
• Eye-tracking revealed HR-noASD toddlers had TD-like target-object-to-face gaze alternations but ASD-like not-target-object-to-face gaze alternations.

Conclusions:

• High-risk, unaffected siblings display a mixed profile of initiating joint attention (IJA) eye-tracking measures.
• Their visual patterns share similarities with both ASD and TD groups, offering new insights into social attention.
• This suggests a unique social attention profile in toddlers with unaffected high-risk status.