Development of social skills in children: Neural and behavioral evidence for the elaboration of cognitive models

Frontiers in Neuroscience

Volumn 9, Issue SEP, 2015, Pages

  Soto Icaza, Patricia ^a,b   Aboitiz, Francisco ^a,b   Billeke, Pablo ^c  

^a PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE CHILE   (Chile)

^b PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE CHILE   (Chile)

^c UNIVERSIDAD DEL DESARROLLO   (Chile)

Author keywords

Autism Spectrum Disorders; Childhood; Development; EEG; FMRI; Social brain; Social cognition; Social skills

Indexed keywords

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT; AUTISM; BIOLOGICAL MOTION PREFERENCE; BRAIN SIZE; CONNECTOME; CORPUS CALLOSUM; ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY; EVENT RELATED POTENTIAL; EYE LIKE SENSITIVITY; FACE RECOGNITION; FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; GAZE FOLLOWING ABILITY; HUMAN; IMITATION; MAGNETOENCEPHALOGRAPHY; MENTAL HEALTH; OSCILLATION; PEER ACCEPTANCE; RECOGNITION; REVIEW; SOCIAL ADAPTATION; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL COGNITION; SOCIAL EVOLUTION;

EID: 84946544991     PISSN: 16624548     EISSN: 1662453X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2015.00333     Document Type: Review

References (159)

1. Ahlsén, G., Rosengren, L., Belfrage, M., Palm, A., Haglid, K., Hamberger, A., et al. (1993). Glial fibrillary acidic protein in the cerebrospinal fluid of children with autism and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Biol. Psychiatry 33, 734-743. doi: 10.1016/0006-3223(93)90124-V
2. Alaerts, K., Nackaerts, E., Meyns, P., Swinnen, S. P., and Wenderoth, N. (2011). Action and emotion recognition from point light displays: an investigation of gender differences. PLoS ONE 6:e20989. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0020989
3. Alcauter, S., Lin, W., Smith, J. K., Short, S. J., Goldman, B. D., Reznick, J. S., et al. (2014). Development of thalamocortical connectivity during infancy and its cognitive correlations. J. Neurosci. 34, 9067-9075. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0796-14.2014
4. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edn. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association
5. Aoki, Y., Kasai, K., and Yamasue, H. (2012). Age-related change in brain metabolite abnormalities in autism: a meta-analysis of proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies. Transl. Psychiatry 2, e69. doi: 10.1038/tp.2011.65
6. Auer, D. P. (2008). Spontaneous low-frequency blood oxygenation level-dependent fluctuations and functional connectivity analysis of the "resting" brain. Magn. Reson. Imaging 26, 1055-1064. doi: 10.1016/j.mri.2008.05.008
7. Baars, B., and Gage, N. (2010). "Social cognition: perceiving the mental states of others", in Cognition, Brain and Consciousness: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience, eds B. Baars and N. Gage (San Diego, CA: Elsevier), 445-465
8. Baars, B., and Gage, N. (2012). Fundamentals of Cognitive Neuroscience: A Beginner's Guide. San Diego, CA: AcademicPress
9. Baillargeon, R., Scott, R. M., and He, Z. (2010). False-belief understanding in infants. Trends Cogn. Sci. 14, 110-118. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2009.12.006
10. Bakeman, R., and Adamson, L. B. (1984). Coordinating attention to people and objects in mother-infant and peer-infant interaction. Child Dev. 55, 1278-1289. doi: 10.2307/1129997
11. Balas, B. J., Nelson, C. A., Westerlund, A., Vogel-Farley, V., Riggins, T., and Kuefner, D. (2010). Personal familiarity influences the processing of upright and inverted faces in infants. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 4:1. doi: 10.3389/neuro.09.001.2010
12. Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., and Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a "theory of mind"? Cognition 21, 37-46. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(85)90022-8
13. Barttfeld, P., Wicker, B., Cukier, S., Navarta, S., Lew, S., and Sigman, M. (2011). A big-world network in ASD: dynamical connectivity analysis reflects a deficit in long-range connections and an excess of short-range connections. Neuropsychologia 49, 254-263. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.11.024
14. Baruth, J. M., Casanova, M. F., Sears, L., and Sokhadze, E. (2010). Early-stage visual processing abnormalities in high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Transl. Neurosci. 1, 177-187. doi: 10.2478/v10134-010-0024-9
15. Bastiaansen, J. A., Thioux, M., and Keysers, C. (2009). Evidence for mirror systems in emotions. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 364, 2391-2404. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0058
16. Bertenthal, B. I., Proffitt, D. R., and Cutting, J. E. (1984). Infant sensitivity to figural coherence in biomechanical motions. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 37, 213-230. doi: 10.1016/0022-0965(84)90001-8
17. Betzel, R. F., Byrge, L., He, Y., Goñi, J., Zuo, X.-N., and Sporns, O. (2014). Changes in structural and functional connectivity among resting-state networks across the human lifespan. Neuroimage 102, 345-357. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.07.067
18. Billeci, L., Sicca, F., Maharatna, K., Apicella, F., Narzisi, A., Campatelli, G., et al. (2013). On the application of quantitative EEG for characterizing autistic brain: a systematic review. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:442. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00442
19. Billeke, P., and Aboitiz, F. (2013). Social cognition in schizophrenia: from social stimuli processing to social engagement. Front. Psychiatry 4:4. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00004
20. Billeke, P., Armijo, A., Castillo, D., López, T., Zamorano, F., Cosmelli, D., et al. (2015). Paradoxical expectation: oscillatory brain activity reveals social interaction impairment in schizophrenia. Biol. Psychiatry 78, 421-431. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.02.012
21. Billeke, P., Boardman, S., and Doraiswamy, P. M. (2013a). Social cognition in major depressive disorder: a new paradigm? Transl. Neurosci. 4, 437-447. doi: 10.2478/s13380-013-0147-9
22. Billeke, P., Zamorano, F., Chavez, M., Cosmelli, D., and Aboitiz, F. (2014a). Functional network dynamics in alpha band correlate with social bargaining. PLoS ONE 9:e109829. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0109829
23. Billeke, P., Zamorano, F., Cosmelli, D., and Aboitiz, F. (2013b). Oscillatory brain activity correlates with risk perception and predicts social decisions. Cereb. Cortex 23, 2872-2883. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhs269
24. Billeke, P., Zamorano, F., López, T., Rodriguez, C., Cosmelli, D., and Aboitiz, F. (2014b). Someone has to give in: theta oscillations correlate with adaptive behavior in social bargaining. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 9, 2041-2048. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsu012
25. Buccino, G., Binkofski, F., Fink, G. R., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., Gallese, V., et al. (2001). Action observation activates premotor and parietal areas in a somatotopic manner: an fMRI study. Eur. J. Neurosci. 13, 400-404. doi: 10.1046/j.1460-9568.2001.01385.x
26. Caruana, N., Brock, J., and Woolgar, A. (2015). A frontotemporoparietal network common to initiating and responding to joint attention bids. Neuroimage. 108, 34-46. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.12.041
27. Chapleau, C. A., Larimore, J. L., Theibert, A., and Pozzo-Miller, L. (2009). Modulation of dendritic spine development and plasticity by BDNF and vesicular trafficking: fundamental roles in neurodevelopmental disorders associated with mental retardation and autism. J. Neurodev. Disord. 1, 185-196. doi: 10.1007/s11689-009-9027-6
28. Charman, T. (2003). Why is joint attention a pivotal skill in autism? Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 358, 315-324. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2002.1199
29. Charman, T., Baron-Cohen, S., Swettenham, J., Baird, G., Cox, A., and Drew, A. (2001). Testing joint attention, imitation, and play as infancy precursors to language and theory of mind. Cogn. Dev. 15, 481-498. doi: 10.1016/S0885-2014(01)00037-5
30. Choi, Y., and Luo, Y. (2015). 13-Month-olds' understanding of social interactions. Psychol. Sci. 26, 274-283. doi: 10.1177/0956797614562452
31. Courchesne, E., Ganz, L., and Norcia, A. M. (1981). Event-related brain potentials to human faces in infants. Child Dev. 52, 804-811. doi: 10.2307/1129080
32. Courchesne, E., and Pierce, K. (2005). Why the frontal cortex in autism might be talking only to itself: local over-connectivity but long-distance disconnection. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 15, 225-230. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2005.03.001
33. Csibra, G., Kushnerenko, E., and Grossmann, T. (2008). "Electrophysiological methods in studying infant cognitive development", in Handbook of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, eds C. A. Nelson and M. Luciana (Cambridge, MA: The MIT press)
34. Dalton, K. M., Nacewicz, B. M., Johnstone, T., Schaefer, H. S., Gernsbacher, M. A., Goldsmith, H. H., et al. (2005). Gaze fixation and the neural circuitry of face processing in autism. Nat. Neurosci. 8, 519-526. doi: 10.1038/nn1421
35. Dapretto, M., Davies, M. S., Pfeifer, J. H., Scott, A. A., Sigman, M., Bookheimer, S. Y., et al. (2006). Understanding emotions in others: mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders. Nat. Neurosci. 9, 28-30. doi: 10.1038/nn1611
36. Davidson, R. J., and McEwen, B. S. (2012). Social influences on neuroplasticity: stress and interventions to promote well-being. Nat. Neurosci. 15, 689-695. doi: 10.1038/nn.3093
37. Dawson, G., Webb, S. J., and McPartland, J. (2005). Understanding the nature of face processing impairment in autism: insights from behavioral and electrophysiological studies. Dev. Neuropsychol. 27, 403-424. doi: 10.1207/s15326942dn2703_6
38. de Bie, H. M., Boersma, M., Adriaanse, S., Veltman, D. J., Wink, A. M., Roosendaal, S. D., et al. (2012). Resting-state networks in awake five-to eight-year old children. Hum. Brain Mapp. 33, 1189-1201. doi: 10.1002/hbm.21280
39. DeBoer, T., Scott, L. S., and Nelson, C. A. (2007). "Methods for acquiring and analyzing infant event-related potentials tracy", in Infant EEG and Event-Related Potentials, ed M. de Haan (New York, NY: Psychology Press Ltd), 5-38
40. de Haan, M. (2002). "Introduction to infant EEG and event-related potentials", in Infant EEG and Event-Related Potentials, ed M. de Haan (New York, NY: Psychology Press Ltd), 39-76
41. de Haan, M., Johnson, M. H., and Halit, H. (2007). "Development of face-sensitive event-related potentials during infancy", in Infant EEG and Event-Related Potentials, ed M. de Haan (New York, NY: Psychology Press Ltd), 1-356
42. de Haan, M., and Nelson, C. (1999). Brain activity differentiates face and object processing in 6-month-old infants. Dev. Psychol. 35, 1113-1121. doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.35.4.1113
43. de Haan, M., and Nelson, C. A. (1997). Recognition of the mother's face by six-month-old infants: a neurobehavioral study. Child Dev. 68, 187-210. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1997.tb01935.x
44. di Giorgio, E., Meary, D., Pascalis, O., and Simion, F. (2012). The face perception system becomes species-specific at 3 months: an eye-tracking study. Int. J. Behav. Dev. 37, 95-99. doi: 10.1177/0165025412465362
45. di Pellegrino, G., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., Gallese, V., and Rizzolatti, G. (1992). Understanding motor events: a neurophysiological study. Exp. Brain Res. 91, 176-180. doi: 10.1007/BF00230027
46. Dinstein, I., Pierce, K., Eyler, L., Solso, S., Malach, R., Behrmann, M., et al. (2011). Disrupted neural synchronization in toddlers with autism. Neuron 70, 1218-1225. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2011.04.018
47. Dinstein, I., Thomas, C., Humphreys, K., Minshew, N., Behrmann, M., and Heeger, D. J. (2010). Normal movement selectivity in autism. Neuron 66, 461-469. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2010.03.034
48. Donner, T. H., and Siegel, M. (2011). A framework for local cortical oscillation patterns. Trends Cogn. Sci. 15, 191-199. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2011.03.007
49. Dunn, M. A., Gomes, H., and Gravel, J. (2008). Mismatch negativity in children with autism and typical development. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 38, 52-71. doi: 10.1007/s10803-007-0359-3
50. Durand, C. M., Perroy, J., Loll, F., Perrais, D., Fagni, L., Bourgeron, T., et al. (2012). SHANK3 mutations identified in autism lead to modification of dendritic spine morphology via an actin-dependent mechanism. Mol. Psychiatry 17, 71-84. doi: 10.1038/mp.2011.57
51. 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. Biol. Psychiatry 65, 31-38. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.09.034
52. Emery, N. J. (2000). The eyes have it: the neuroethology, function and evolution of social gaze. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 24, 581-604. doi: 10.1016/S0149-7634(00)00025-7
53. Fair, D. A., Cohen, A. L., Power, J. D., Dosenbach, N. U., Church, J. A., Miezin, F. M., et al. (2009). Functional brain networks develop from a "local to distributed" organization. PLoS Comput. Biol. 5:e1000381. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000381
54. Farroni, T., Csibra, G., Simion, F., and Johnson, M. H. (2002). Eye contact detection in humans from birth. 99, 9602-9605. doi: 10.1073/pnas.152159999
55. Favre, M. R., la Mendola, D., Meystre, J., Christodoulou, D., Cochrane, M. J., Markram, H., et al. (2015). Predictable enriched environment prevents development of hyper-emotionality in the VPA rat model of autism. Front. Neurosci. 9:127. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2015.00127
56. Ferrari, P. F., Visalberghi, E., Paukner, A., Fogassi, L., Ruggiero, A., and Suomi, S. J. (2006). Neonatal imitation in rhesus macaques. PLoS Biol. 4:e302. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040302
57. Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 11, 127-138. doi: 10.1038/nrn2787
58. Furuhata, N., and Shirai, N. (2015). The development of gaze behaviors in response to biological motion displays. Infant Behav. Dev. 38, 97-106. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2014.12.014
59. Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., and Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain 119(Pt 2), 593-609. doi: 10.1093/brain/119.2.593
60. García, R. R., Zamorano, F., and Aboitiz, F. (2014). From imitation to meaning: circuit plasticity and the acquisition of a conventionalized semantics. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8:605. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00605
61. Gariépy, J.-F., Watson, K. K., Du, E., Xie, D. L., Erb, J., Amasino, D., et al. (2014). Social learning in humans and other animals. Front. Neurosci. 8:58. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2014.00058
62. Gliga, T., Jones, E. J., Bedford, R., Charman, T., and Johnson, M. H. (2014). From early markers to neuro-developmental mechanisms of autism. Dev. Rev. 34, 189-207. doi: 10.1016/j.dr.2014.05.003
63. Goldman, D. Z., Shapiro, E. G., and Nelson, C. A. (2004). Measurement of vigilance in 2-year-old children. Dev. Neuropsychol. 25, 227-250. doi: 10.1207/s15326942dn2503_1
64. Gotts, S. J., Simmons, W. K., Milbury, L. A., Wallace, G. L., Cox, R. W., and Martin, A. (2012). Fractionation of social brain circuits in autism spectrum disorders. Brain J. Neurol. 135, 2711-2725. doi: 10.1093/brain/aws160
65. Gunji, A., Goto, T., Kita, Y., Sakuma, R., Kokubo, N., Koike, T., et al. (2013). Facial identity recognition in children with autism spectrum disorders revealed by P300 analysis: a preliminary study. Brain Dev. 35, 293-298. doi: 10.1016/j.braindev.2012.12.008
66. Haan, D., Pascalis, O., and Johnson, M. H. (2002). Specialization of neural mechanisms underlying face recognition in human infants. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 14, 199-209. doi: 10.1162/089892902317236849
67. Happé, F., and Frith, U. (2006). The weak coherence account: detail-focused cognitive style in autism spectrum disorders. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 36, 5-25. doi: 10.1007/s10803-005-0039-0
68. Happé, F., and Frith, U. (2014). Annual research review: towards a developmental neuroscience of atypical social cognition. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 55, 553-577. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12162
69. Happé, F. G. (1995). The role of age and verbal ability in the theory of mind task performance of subjects with autism. Child Dev. 66, 843-855. doi: 10.2307/1131954
70. Hileman, C. M., Henderson, H., Mundy, P., Newell, L., and Jaime, M. (2011). Developmental and individual differences on the P1 and N170 ERP components in children with and without autism. Dev. Neuropsychol. 36, 214-236. doi: 10.1080/87565641.2010.549870
71. Hoehl, S., Reid, V., Mooney, J., and Striano, T. (2008). What are you looking at? Infants' neural processing of an adult's object-directed eye gaze. Dev. Sci. 11, 10-16. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00643.x
72. Hopf, J. M., and Mangun, G. R. (2000). Shifting visual attention in space: an electrophysiological analysis using high spatial resolution mapping. Clin. Neurophysiol. 111, 1241-1257. doi: 10.1016/S1388-2457(00)00313-8
73. Hopkins, W. D., and Taglialatela, J. P. (2013). Initiation of joint attention is associated with morphometric variation in the anterior cingulate cortex of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Am. J. Primatol. 75, 441-449. doi: 10.1002/ajp.22120
74. Iacoboni, M., and Dapretto, M. (2006). The mirror neuron system and the consequences of its dysfunction. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 7, 942-951. doi: 10.1038/nrn2024
75. Itier, R. J. (2004). N170 or N1? Spatiotemporal differences between object and face processing using ERPs. Cereb. Cortex 14, 132-142. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhg111
76. Jessen, S., and Grossmann, T. (2014). Neural signatures of conscious and unconscious emotional face processing in human infants. Cortex 64, 260-270. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.11.007
77. Johansson, G. (1973). Visual perception of biological motion and a model for its analysis. Perception 14, 201-211. doi: 10.3758/bf03212378
78. Johnson, M. H. (2006). Biological motion: a perceptual life detector? Curr. Biol. 16, R373-R376. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2006.04.008
79. Johnson, M. H. (2011). Interactive specialization: a domain-general framework for human functional brain development? Dev. Cogn. Neurosci. 1, 7-21. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2010.07.003
80. Johnson, M. H., Griffin, R., Csibra, G., Halit, H., Farroni, T., de Haan, M., et al. (2005). The emergence of the social brain network: evidence from typical and atypical development. Dev. Psychopathol. 17, 599-619. doi: 10.1017/S0954579405050297
81. Jones, W., and Klin, A. (2013). Attention to eyes is present but in decline in 2-6-month-old infants later diagnosed with autism. Nature 504, 427-431. doi: 10.1038/nature12715
82. Karrer, R., and Monti, L. (1995). Event-related potentials of 4-7-week-old infants in a visual recognition memory task. Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol. 94, 414-424. doi: 10.1016/0013-4694(94)00313-A
83. Kelly, D. J., Quinn, P. C., Slater, A. M., Lee, K., Gibson, A., Smith, M., et al. (2005). Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces. Dev. Sci. 8, 31-36. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.0434a.x
84. Kennedy, D. P., and Adolphs, R. (2012). The social brain in psychiatric and neurological disorders. Trends Cogn. Sci. 16, 559-572. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2012.09.006
85. Keysers, C., and Gazzola, V. (2010). Social neuroscience: mirror neurons recorded in humans. Curr. Biol. 20, R353-R354. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.03.013
86. Khan, S., Gramfort, A., Shetty, N. R., Kitzbichler, M. G., Ganesan, S., Moran, J. M., et al. (2013). Local and long-range functional connectivity is reduced in concert in autism spectrum disorders. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 3107-3112. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1214533110
87. Kleinhans, N. M., Richards, T., Sterling, L., Stegbauer, K. C., Mahurin, R., Johnson, L. C., et al. (2008). Abnormal functional connectivity in autism spectrum disorders during face processing. Brain 131, 1000-1012. doi: 10.1093/brain/awm334
88. Klimesch, W. (2012). Alpha-band oscillations, attention, and controlled access to stored information. Trends Cogn. Sci. 16, 606-617. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2012.10.007
89. Klin, A., Jones, W., Schultz, R., Volkmar, F., and Cohen, D. (2002). Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 59, 809-816. doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.59.9.809
90. Kopp, F., and Lindenberger, U. (2011). Effects of joint attention on long-term memory in 9-month-old infants? an event-related potentials study. Dev. Sci. 14, 660-672. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01010.x
91. Koster-Hale, J., and Saxe, R. (2013). Theory of mind: a neural prediction problem. Neuron 79, 836-848. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.08.020
92. Kovács, á. M., Téglás, E., and Endress, A. D. (2010). The social sense: susceptibility to others' beliefs in human infants and adults. Science 330, 1830-1834. doi: 10.1126/science.1190792
93. Kuefner, D., de Heering, A., Jacques, C., Palmero-Soler, E., and Rossion, B. (2010). Early visually evoked electrophysiological responses over the human brain (P1, N170) show stable patterns of face-sensitivity from 4 years to adulthood. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 3, 67. doi: 10.3389/neuro.09.067.2009
94. Lachat, F., Hugueville, L., Lemaréchal, J. D., Conty, L., and George, N. (2012). Oscillatory brain correlates of live joint attention: a dual-EEG study. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 6:156. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00156
95. Lefebvre, A., Beggiato, A., Bourgeron, T., and Toro, R. (2015). Neuroanatomical diversity of corpus callosum and brain volume in the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (Abide) project. Biol. Psychiatry 78, 126-134. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.02.010
96. Lepage, J. F., and Théoret, H. (2006). EEG evidence for the presence of an action observation-execution matching system in children. Eur. J. Neurosci. 23, 2505-2510. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2006.04769.x
97. Luyster, R. J., Powell, C., Tager-Flusberg, H., and Nelson, C. (2014). Neural measures of social attention across the first years of life: characterizing typical development and markers of autism risk. Dev. Cogn. Neurosci. 8, 131-143. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2013.09.006
98. Macchi Cassia, V., Bulf, H., Quadrelli, E., and Proietti, V. (2014). Age-related face processing bias in infancy: evidence of perceptual narrowing for adult faces. Dev. Psychobiol. 56, 238-248. doi: 10.1002/dev.21191
99. McCall, C., and Singer, T. (2012). The animal and human neuroendocrinology of social cognition, motivation and behavior. Nat. Neurosci. 15, 681-688. doi: 10.1038/nn.3084
100. McCulloch, D. L. (2007). "Visual evoked potentials in infants", in Infant EEG and Event-Related Potentials, ed M. de Haan (New York, NY: Psychology Press Ltd), 39-76
101. Meltzoff, A. N., and Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science 198, 75-78. doi: 10.1126/science.198.4312.75
102. Mills, K. L., Lalonde, F., Clasen, L. S., Giedd, J. N., and Blakemore, S.-J. (2012). Developmental changes in the structure of the social brain in late childhood and adolescence. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 9, 123-131. doi: 10.1093/scan/nss113
103. Moll, H., and Kadipasaoglu, D. (2013). The primacy of social over visual perspective-taking. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:558. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00558
104. Morgan, B., Maybery, M., and Durkin, K. (2003). Weak central coherence, poor joint attention, and low verbal ability: independent deficits in early autism. Dev. Psychol. 39, 646-656. doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.39.4.646
105. Mukamel, R., Ekstrom, A. D., Kaplan, J., Iacoboni, M., and Fried, I. (2010). Single neuron responses in humans during execution and observation of actions. Curr. Biol. 20, 750-756. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.02.045
106. Mundy, P., Card, J., and Fox, N. (2000). EEG correlates of the development of infant joint attention skills. Dev. Psychobiol. 36, 325-338
107. Mundy, P., and Jarrold, W. (2010). Infant joint attention, neural networks and social cognition. Neural Netw. 23, 985-997. doi: 10.1016/j.neunet.2010.08.009
108. Mundy, P., Sullivan, L., and Mastergeorge, A. M. (2009). A parallel and distributed-processing model of joint attention, social-cognition and autism. Autism Res. 2, 2-21. doi: 10.1002/aur.61
109. Nair, A., Treiber, J. M., Shukla, D. K., Shih, P., and Müller, R. A. (2013). Impaired thalamocortical connectivity in autism spectrum disorder: a study of functional and anatomical connectivity. Brain 136, 1942-1955. doi: 10.1093/brain/awt079
110. Nelson, C. A., and McCleery, J. P. (2008). Use of event-related potentials in the study of typical and atypical development. J. Am. Acad. Child Psychiatry 47, 1252-1261. doi: 10.1097/CHI.0b013e318185a6d8
111. Oberman, L. M., Hubbard, E. M., McCleery, J. P., Altschuler, E. L., Ramachandran, V. S., and Pineda, J. A. (2005). EEG evidence for mirror neuron dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders. Brain Res. Cogn. Brain Res. 24, 190-198. doi: 10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2005.01.014
112. Oberman, L. M., McCleery, J. P., Hubbard, E. M., Bernier, R., Wiersema, J. R., Raymaekers, R., et al. (2013). Developmental changes in mu suppression to observed and executed actions in autism spectrum disorders. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 8, 300-304. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsr097
113. Ogawa, S., Lee, T. M., Kay, A. R., and Tank, D. W. (1990). Brain magnetic resonance imaging with contrast dependent on blood oxygenation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 87, 9868-9872. doi: 10.1073/pnas.87.24.9868
114. Olson, I. R., McCoy, D., Klobusicky, E., and Ross, L. (2012). Social cognition and the anterior temporal lobes: a review and theoretical framework. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 8, 123-133. doi: 10.1093/scan/nss119
115. Parker, S. W., and Nelson, C. (2005). The impact of early institutional rearing on the ability to discriminate facial expressions of emotion: an event-related potential study. Child Dev. 76, 54-72. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2005.00829.x
116. Paukner, A., Ferrari, P. F., and Suomi, S. J. (2011). Delayed imitation of lipsmacking gestures by infant rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). PLoS ONE 6:e28848. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028848
117. Pavlova, M., and Sokolov, A. (2000). Orientation specificity in biological motion perception. Percept. Psychophys. 62, 889-899. doi: 10.3758/BF03212075
118. Pelphrey, K. A., Sasson, N. J., Reznick, J. S., Paul, G., Goldman, B. D., and Piven, J. (2002). Visual scanning of faces in autism. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 32, 249-261. doi: 10.1023/A:1016374617369
119. Peña, M., Arias, D., and Dehaene-Lambertz, G. (2014). Gaze following is accelerated in healthy preterm infants. Psychol. Sci. 25, 1884-1892. doi: 10.1177/0956797614544307
120. Penzes, P., Woolfrey, K. M., and Srivastava, D. P. (2011). Epac2-mediated dendritic spine remodeling: implications for disease. Mol. Cell. Neurosci. 46, 368-380. doi: 10.1016/j.mcn.2010.11.008
121. Perner, J., and Roessler, J. (2012). From infants' to children's appreciation of belief. Trends Cogn. Sci. 16, 518-524. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2012.08.004
122. Premack, D., and Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behav. Brain Sci. 49, 515-526. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X00076512
123. Quinn, P. C., Yahr, J., Kuhn, A., Slater, A. M., and Pascalis, O. (2002). Representation of the gender of human faces by infants: a preference for female. Perception 31, 1109-1121. doi: 10.1068/p3331
124. Rao, P. A., Beidel, D. C., and Murray, M. J. (2008). Social skills interventions for children with Asperger's syndrome or high-functioning autism: a review and recommendations. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 38, 353-361. doi: 10.1007/s10803-007-0402-4
125. Raymaekers, R., Wiersema, J. R., and Roeyers, H. (2009). EEG study of the mirror neuron system in children with high functioning autism. Brain Res. 1304, 113-121. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2009.09.068
126. Redcay, E., and Courchesne, E. (2008). Deviant functional magnetic resonance imaging patterns of brain activity to speech in 2-3-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder. Biol. Psychiatry 64, 589-598. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.05.020
127. Redcay, E., Dodell-Feder, D., Mavros, P. L., Kleiner, M., Pearrow, M. J., Triantafyllou, C., et al. (2013). Atypical brain activation patterns during a face-to-face joint attention game in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Hum. Brain Mapp. 34, 2511-2523. doi: 10.1002/hbm.22086
128. Reynolds, G. D., and Richards, J. E. (2005). Familiarization, attention, and recognition memory in infancy: an event-related potential and cortical source localization study. Dev. Psychol. 41, 598-615. doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.41.4.598
129. Richards, J. E. (2003). Attention affects the recognition of briefly presented visual stimuli in infants: an ERP study. Dev. Sci. 6, 312-328. doi: 10.1111/1467-7687.00287
130. Righi, G., Tierney, A. L., Tager-Flusberg, H., and Nelson, C. A. (2014). Functional connectivity in the first year of life in infants at risk for autism spectrum disorder: an EEG study. PLoS ONE 9:e105176. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105176
131. Rizzolatti, G., and Craighero, L. (2004). The mirror-neuron system. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 27, 169-192. doi: 10.1146/annurev.neuro.27.070203.144230
132. Rizzolatti, G., and Sinigaglia, C. (2010). The functional role of the parieto-frontal mirror circuit: interpretations and misinterpretations. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 11, 264-274. doi: 10.1038/nrn2805
133. Rossignol, D. A., and Frye, R. E. (2012). Mitochondrial dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Mol. Psychiatry 17, 290-314. doi: 10.1038/mp.2010.136
134. Rudie, J. D., Shehzad, Z., Hernandez, L. M., Colich, N. L., Bookheimer, S. Y., Iacoboni, M., et al. (2012). Reduced functional integration and segregation of distributed neural systems underlying social and emotional information processing in autism spectrum disorders. Cereb. Cortex 22, 1025-1037. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr171
135. Saxe, R., and Kanwisher, N. (2003). People thinking about thinking peopleThe role of the temporo-parietal junction in "theory of mind." Neuroimage 19, 1835-1842. doi: 10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00230-1
136. Saxe, R. R., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., Scholz, J., and Pelphrey, K. A. (2009). Brain regions for perceiving and reasoning about other people in school-aged children. Child Dev. 80, 1197-1209. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01325.x
137. Shepherd, S. V., Deaner, R. O., and Platt, M. L. (2006). Social status gates social attention in monkeys. Curr. Biol. 16, R119-R120. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2006.02.013
138. Simion, F., Regolin, L., and Bulf, H. (2008). A predisposition for biological motion in the newborn baby. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105, 809-813. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0707021105
139. Smit, D. J., Boersma, M., Schnack, H. G., Micheloyannis, S., Boomsma, D. I., Hulshoff Pol, H. E., et al. (2012). The brain matures with stronger functional connectivity and decreased randomness of its network. PLoS ONE 7:e36896. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0036896
140. Southgate, V., Senju, A., and Csibra, G. (2007). Action anticipation through attribution of false belief by 2-year-olds. Psychol. Sci. 18, 587-592. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x
141. Stevenson, R. A., Siemann, J. K., Schneider, B. C., Eberly, H. E., Woynaroski, T. G., Camarata, S. M., et al. (2014). Multisensory temporal integration in autism spectrum disorders. J. Neurosci. 34, 691-697. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3615-13.2014
142. Striano, T., Reid, V. M., and Hoehl, S. (2006). Neural mechanisms of joint attention in infancy. Eur. J. Neurosci. 23, 2819-2823. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2006.04822.x
143. Stroganova, T. A., Nygren, G., Tsetlin, M. M., Posikera, I. N., Gillberg, C., Elam, M., et al. (2007). Abnormal EEG lateralization in boys with autism. Clin. Neurophysiol. 118, 1842-1854. doi: 10.1016/j.clinph.2007.05.005
144. Surian, L., Caldi, S., and Sperber, D. (2007). Attribution of beliefs by 13-month-old infants. Psychol. Sci. 18, 580-586. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01943.x
145. Tager-Flusberg, H. (1999). A psychological approach to understanding the social and language impairments in autism. Int. Rev. Psychiatry 11, 325-334. doi: 10.1080/09540269974203
146. Tallon-Baudry, C., and Bertrand, O. (1999). Oscillatory gamma activity in humans and its role in object representation. Trends Cogn. Sci. 3, 151-162. doi: 10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01299-1
147. Turati, C., Valenza, E., Leo, I., and Simion, F. (2005). Three-month-olds' visual preference for faces and its underlying visual processing mechanisms. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 90, 255-273. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2004.11.001
148. Tymofiyeva, O., Hess, C. P., Xu, D., and Barkovich, A. J. (2014). Structural MRI connectome in development: challenges of the changing brain. Br. J. Radiol. 87:20140086. doi: 10.1259/bjr.20140086
149. Uhlhaas, P. J., and Singer, W. (2006). Neural synchrony in brain disorders: relevance for cognitive dysfunctions and pathophysiology. Neuron 52, 155-168. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2006.09.020
150. Ungerer, J. A., and Sigman, M. (1981). Symbolic play and language comprehension in autistic children. J. Am. Acad. Child Psychiatry 20, 318-337. doi: 10.1016/S0002-7138(09)60992-4
151. Vargas, D. L., Nascimbene, C., Krishnan, C., Zimmerman, A. W., and Pardo, C. (2005). Neuroglial activation and neuroinflammation in the brain of patients with autism. Ann. Neurol. 57, 67-81. doi: 10.1002/ana.20315
152. Von dem Hagen, E. A., Stoyanova, R. S., Baron-Cohen, S., and Calder, A. J. (2013). Reduced functional connectivity within and between "social" resting state networks in autism spectrum conditions. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 8, 694-701. doi: 10.1093/scan/nss053
153. Von dem Hagen, E. A., Stoyanova, R. S., Rowe, J. B., Baron-Cohen, S., and Calder, A. J. (2014). Direct gaze elicits atypical activation of the theory-of-mind network in autism spectrum conditions. Cereb. Cortex 24, 1485-1492. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bht003
154. Wang, X. (2010). Neurophysiological and computational principles of cortical rhythms in cognition. Physiol. Rev. 90, 1195-1268. doi: 10.1152/physrev.00035.2008
155. Webb, S. L., Long, J. D., and Nelson, C. A. (2005). A longitudinal investigation of visual event-related potentials in the first year of life. Dev. Sci. 6, 605-616. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.00452.x
156. Webb, S. J., and Nelson, C. (2001). Perceptual priming for upright and inverted faces in infants and adults. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 79, 1-22. doi: 10.1006/jecp.2000.2582
157. Wellman, H. M., Cross, D., and Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: the truth about false belief. Child Dev. 72, 655-684. doi: 10.1111/1467-8624.00304
158. Wing, L., and Gould, J. (1979). Severe impairments of social interaction and associated abnormalities in children: epidemiology and classification. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 9, 11-29. doi: 10.1007/BF01531288
159. Zieber, N., Kangas, A., Hock, A., Hayden, A., Collins, R., Bada, H., et al. (2013). Perceptual specialization and configural face processing in infancy. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 116, 625-639. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2013.07.007