Early Learning in Autism

Abstract

Typically developing children are well equipped to learn from their social environment from infancy. Early learning is supported by attentional preferences for novel events, others’ goal directed actions and communication cues, as well as early maturing abilities to share attention with their social partners, imitating them, understanding their actions and emotions, and developing close connections. Additionally, typically developing children experience social interactions as inherently rewarding, and infant learning experiences enabled by these processes contribute to further learning. Early learning is disrupted in young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder due to differences in the ‘built-in’ preferences and responses that support social learning in infants and toddlers. These early abnormalities, in turn, might result in a child who is not receiving the types of learning experiences needed to stimulate the organization and specialization of the neural networks that support the development of social communication and more advanced forms of social learning. Early intervention can play a major role in decreasing these early learning disruptions in children with autism.