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Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Gepubliceerd in:

01-12-2012 | Original Paper

Atypical Social Referencing in Infant Siblings of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Auteurs: Lauren Cornew, Karen R. Dobkins, Natacha Akshoomoff, Joseph P. McCleery, Leslie J. Carver

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders | Uitgave 12/2012

Abstract

Social referencing was investigated in 18-month-old siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; “high-risk infants”). Infants were exposed to novel toys, which were emotionally tagged via adults’ facial and vocal signals. Infants’ information seeking (initiation of joint attention with an adult) and their approach/withdrawal behavior toward the toys before versus after the adults’ emotional signals was measured. Compared to both typically developing infants and high-risk infants without ASD, infants later diagnosed with ASD engaged in slower information seeking, suggesting that this aspect of referencing may be an early indicator of ASD. High-risk infants, both those who were and those who were not later diagnosed with ASD, exhibited impairments in regulating their behavior based on the adults’ emotional signals, suggesting that this aspect of social referencing may reflect an endophenotype for ASD.

vorige artikel Network Characteristics, Perceived Social Support, and Psychological Adjustment in Mothers of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

volgende artikel Rating Parent–Child Interactions: Joint Engagement, Communication Dynamics, and Shared Topics in Autism, Down Syndrome, and Typical Development

Note that the use of the term ‘behavior regulation’ in the context of social referencing is somewhat different from another common use of the term in the ASD literature, where it may refer to behaviors on the part of the child in order to fulfill a goal.

Data from the LR infant who was subsequently diagnosed with ASD were included in the ASD group in keeping with the study’s goal of investigating the early emergence of social referencing impairments in ASD.

The ASD group was not included in this analysis because there were too few values in each cell to meet the assumptions of a Chi Square test. In addition, at the time of testing, it was unknown which HR infants would later meet ASD diagnostic criteria. Nevertheless, the emotion orders of the ASD infants were distributed, with two infants assigned to order 1, zero to order 2, two to order 3, three to order 4, and one each to orders 5 and 6.

Infants’ looking behavior is referred to as information seeking throughout this paper because our paradigm was designed to study social referencing, of which information seeking is a crucial part. Nevertheless, the motivation driving infants’ looking behavior when confronted by an ambiguous stimulus is uncertain. When infants’ referential looking is followed by appropriate behavior regulation toward the stimulus in accordance with the emotional signals, it is reasonable to infer that their looking was motivated by information seeking. However, in cases where infants looked referentially to adults but did not appropriately regulate their behavior, it is possible that they were not in fact seeking information.

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Titel: Atypical Social Referencing in Infant Siblings of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Auteurs: Lauren Cornew
Karen R. Dobkins
Natacha Akshoomoff
Joseph P. McCleery
Leslie J. Carver
Publicatiedatum: 01-12-2012
Uitgeverij: Springer US
Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders / Uitgave 12/2012
Print ISSN: 0162-3257
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-3432
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-012-1518-8

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