Precursors to social and communication difficulties in infants at-risk for autism: Gaze following and attentional engagement

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Volumn 42, Issue 10, 2012, Pages 2208-2218

  Bedford, Rachael ^a   Elsabbagh, Mayada ^b   Gliga, Teodora ^b   Pickles, Andrew ^c   Senju, Atsushi ^b   Charman, Tony ^a   Johnson, Mark H ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^c KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

At risk siblings; Autism; Broader autism phenotype; Gaze following; Joint attention

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ATTENTION; AUTISM; AUTISM DIAGNOSTIC OBSERVATION SCHEDULE; CHILD; CHILD DEVELOPMENT; COMMUNICATION DISORDER; CONTROLLED STUDY; FEMALE; HIGH RISK INFANT; HUMAN; INFANT; INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF DISEASES; INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION; LONGITUDINAL STUDY; MAJOR CLINICAL STUDY; MALE; MULLEN SCALES OF EARLY LEARNING; OUTCOMES RESEARCH; PRESCHOOL CHILD; PRIORITY JOURNAL; PSYCHOLOGIC ASSESSMENT; RATING SCALE; SCORING SYSTEM; SOCIAL INTERACTION;

ATTENTION; AUTISTIC DISORDER; CHILD, PRESCHOOL; COMMUNICATION; EYE MOVEMENTS; FEMALE; HUMANS; INFANT; MALE; SIBLINGS; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR;

EID: 84866735907     PISSN: 01623257     EISSN: 15733432     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-012-1450-y     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. Baird, G., Simonoff, E., Pickles, A., Chandler, S., Loucas, T., Meldrum, D., et al. (2006). Prevalence of disorders of the autism spectrum in a population cohort of children in South Thames: The Special Needs and Autism Project (SNAP). Lancet, 368, 210-215.
2. Baron-Cohen, S. (1989). Perceptual role taking and protodeclarative pointing in autism. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 7, 113-127.
3. Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Boston: MIT Press/Bradford Books.
4. Batki, A., Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Connellan, J., & Ahluwalia, J. (2000). Is there an innate gaze module? Evidence from human neonates. Infant Behavior and Development, 23, 223-229.
5. Bolton, P., Macdonald, H., Pickles, A., Rios, P., Goode, S., Crowson, M. E., et al. (1994). A case-control family history study of autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 35, 877-900.
6. Brooks, R., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2005). The development of gaze following and its relation to language. Developmental Science, 8, 535-543.
7. Butterworth, G., & Jarrett, N. (1991). What minds have in common in space: Spatial mechanisms serving joint visual attention in infancy. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9, 55-72.
8. Caron, A. J., Caron, R., Roberts, J., & Brooks, R. (1997). Infant sensitivity to deviations in dynamic facial-vocal displays: The role of eye regard. Developmental Psychology, 33, 802-813.
9. Carpenter, M., Nagell, K., & Tomasello, M. (1998). Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 63 (4, Serial No. 255).
10. Cassel, T. D., Messinger, D. S., Ibanez, L. V., Haltigan, J. D., Acosta, S. I., & Buchman, A. C. (2007). Early social and emotional communication in the infant siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders: An examination of the broad phenotype. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 122-132.
11. Charman, T. (2003). Why is joint attention a pivotal skill in autism? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 358, 315-324.
12. Charman, T., & Baird, G. (2002). Practitioner review: Assessment and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders in the pre-school years. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 289-305.
13. Chawarska, K., Klin, A., & Volkmar, F. (2003). Automatic attention cueing through eye movement in 2-year-old children with autism. Child Development, 74, 1108-1122.
14. Constantino, J. N., Zhang, Y., Frazier, T., Abbacchi, A. M., & Law, P. (2010). Sibling recurrence and the genetic epidemiology of autism. American Journal of Psychiatry, 167, 1349-1356.
15. Deaner, R. O., & Platt, M. L. (2003). Reflexive social attention in monkeys and humans. Current Biology, 13, 1609-1613.
16. Driver, J., Davis, G., Ricciardelli, P., Kidd, P., Maxwell, E., & Baron-Cohen, S. (1999). Gaze perception triggers reflexive visuospatial orienting. Visual Cognition, 6, 509-540.
17. Elsabbagh, M., & Johnson, M. H. (2007). Infancy and autism: Progress, prospects, and challenges. Progress in Brain Research, 164, 355-382.
18. Elsabbagh, M., & Johnson, M. H. (2010). Getting answers from babies about autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14, 81-87.
19. Elsabbagh, M., Volein, A., Csibra, G., Holmboe, K., Garwood, H., Tucker, L., et al. (2009). Neural correlates of eye gaze processing in the infant broader autism phenotype. Biological Psychiatry, 65, 31-38.
20. Farroni, T., Csibra, G., Simion, F., & Johnson, M. H. (2002). Eye contact detection in humans from birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 99, 9602-9605.
21. Farroni, T., Mansfield, E. M., Lai, C., & Johnson, M. H. (2003). Infants perceiving and acting on the eyes: Tests of an evolutionary hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 85, 199-212.
22. Farroni, T., Massaccesi, S., Pividori, D., & Johnson, M. H. (2004). Gaze following in Newborns. Infancy, 5, 39-60.
23. Fombonne, E., Simmons, H., Ford, T., Meltzer, H., & Goodman, R. (2003). Prevalence of pervasive developmental disorders in the British nationwide survey of child mental health. International Review of Psychiatry, 15, 158-165.
24. Frischen, A., Bayliss, A. P., & Tipper, S. P. (2007). Gaze cueing of attention. Visual attention, social cognition, and individual differences. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 694-724.
25. Goldberg, W. A., Jarvis, K. L., Osann, K., Laulhere, T. M., Straub, C., Thomas, E., et al. (2005). Brief report: Early social communication behaviors in the younger siblings of children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 35, 657-664.
26. Goodman, R., Ford, T., Richards, H., Gatward, R., & Meltzer, H. (2000). The development and well-being assessment: Description and initial validation of an integrated assessment of child and adolescent psychopathology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 41, 645-655.
27. Hare, B., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (1998). Communication of food location between human and dog (Canis Familiaris). Evolution of Communication, 2, 137-159.
28. Hood, B. M., & Atkinson, J. (1993). Disengaging visual-attention in the infant and adult. Infant Behavior and Development, 16(4), 423-439.
29. Hood, B. M., Willen, J. D., & Driver, J. (1998). Gaze perception triggers corresponding shifts of visual attention in young infants. Psychological Science, 9, 131-134.
30. Landa, R., Holman, K. C., & Garrett-Mayer, E. (2007). Social and communication development in toddlers with early and later diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 64, 853-864.
31. Lord, C., Risi, S., Lambrecht, L., Cook, E. H., Jr., Leventhal, B. L., Di Lavore, P. C., et al. (2000). The autism diagnostic observation schedule-generic: A standard measure of social and communicative deficits associated with the spectrum of autism. Journal of Autism Developmental Disorders, 30, 205-223.
32. Lord, C., Rutter, M. L., & Le Couteur, A. (1994). The autism diagnostic interview-revised: A revised version of a diagnostic interview for caregivers of individuals with possible pervasive developmental disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24, 659-685.
33. Moore, C., & Corkum, V. (1998). Infant gaze following based on eye direction. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 16, 495-503.
34. Mullen, E. M. (1995). Mullen scales of early learning (AGS ed.). Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service Inc.
35. Mundy, P., Hogan, A., & Doehring, P. (1996). A preliminary manual for the abridged early social-communication scales. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami. www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/pmundy.
36. Mundy, P., Sigman, M., Ungerer, J., & Sherman, T. (1986). Defining the social deficits of autism: The contribution of non-verbal communication measures. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 27, 657-669.
37. Mundy, P., Sullivan, L., & Mastergeorge, A. M. (2009). A parallel and distributed-processing model of joint attention, social cognition and autism. Autism Research, 2, 2-21.
38. Nation, K., & Penny, S. (2008). Sensitivity to eye gaze in autism: Is it normal? Is it automatic? Is it social? Development and Psychopathology, 20, 79-97.
39. Ozonoff, S., Young, G. S., Carter, A., Messinger, D., Yirmiya, N., Zwaigenbaum, L., et al. (2011). Recurrence risk for autism spectrum disorders: A baby siblings research consortium study. Pediatrics, 128, e1-e8.
40. Pickles, A. (1998). Generalized estimating equations. In P. Armitage, T. Colton (Eds.), The encyclopedia of biostatistics Vol 2 (pp. 1626-1637). New York: Wiley.
41. Povinelli, D. J., Bierschwale, D. T., & Cech, C. G. (1999). Comprehension of seeing as a referential act in young children, but not juvenile chimpanzees. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 17, 37-60.
42. Presmanes, A. G., Walden, T. A., Stone, W. L., & Yoder, P. J. (2007). Effects of different attentional cues on responding to joint attention in younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 133-144.
43. Risi, S., Lord, C., Gotham, K., Corsello, C., Chrysler, C., Szatmari, P., et al. (2006). Combining information from multiple sources in the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 45, 1094-1103.
44. Rogers, S. J. (2009). What are infant siblings teaching us about autism in infancy? Autism Research, 2, 125-137.
45. Rutter, M., Bailey, A., & Lord, C. (2003) SCQ: Social communication questionnaire. Manual. Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services.
46. Scaife, M., & Bruner, J. S. (1975). The capacity for joint visual attention in the infant. Nature, 253, 265-266.
47. Senju, A., & Csibra, G. (2008). Gaze following in human infants depends on communicative signals. Current Biology, 18, 668-671.
48. Senju, A., Tojo, Y., Dairoku, H., & Hasegawa, T. (2004). Reflexive orienting in response to eye gaze and an arrow in children with and without autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 445-458.
49. Striano, T., Reid, V. M., & Hoehl, S. (2006). Neural mechanisms of joint attention in infancy. European Journal of Neuroscience, 23, 2819-2823.
50. Swettenham, J., Condie, S., Campbell, R., Milne, E., & Coleman, M. (2003). Does the perception of moving eyes trigger reflexive visual orienting in autism? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 358, 325-334.
51. Tomasello, M., Call, J., & Hare, B. (1998). Five primate species follow the visual gaze of conspecifics. Animal Behavior, 55, 1063-1069.
52. Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Brain and Behavior Sciences, 28, 675-690.
53. Vivanti, G., McCormick, C., Young, G. S., Abucayan, F., Hatt, N., Nadig, A., et al. (2011). Intact and impaired mechanisms of action understanding in autism. Developmental Psychology, 47, 841-856.
54. World Health Organization. (1993). The ICD-10 classification of mental and behavioural disorders. Diagnostic criteria for research. Geneva: WHO.
55. Yirmiya, N., & Charman, T. (2010). The prodrome of autism: Early behavioral and biological signs, regression, peri-and post-natal development and genetics. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51, 432-458.
56. Yirmiya, N., Gamliel, I., Pilowsky, T., Feldman, R., Baron-Cohen, S., & Sigman, M. (2006). The development of siblings of children with autism at 4 and 14 months: Social engagement, communication, and cognition. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47, 511-523.
57. Yoder, P., Stone, W. L., Walden, T., & Malesa, E. (2009). Predicting social impairment and ASD diagnosis in younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39, 1381-1391.