Infancy and autism: progress, prospects, and challenges
Section snippets
Autism and infancy: an overview
Much research into autism over the past decades has presented a neat developmental story: a form of neurodevelopmental deficit, commonly attributed to brain networks subserving social cognition, leads to decreased attention to, or interest in, the social world. This early lack of attention to or interest in social stimuli interferes with the emergence of critical developmental milestones relevant for social cognition such as shared attention. These cascading influences eventually lead to
Approaches to the neurocognitive study of autism in infancy
A wide range of theoretical approaches have attempted to specify the “core deficits” in autism in adults and older children. This refers to aspects of cognition and their neural underpinnings that present a unifying and parsimonious characterization and/or causal explanation of autism. Several core deficits have been proposed. These include deficits in social orienting, attention, and motivation; deficits in executive function; and differences in low-level perceptual and attentional processes.
Infancy and autism at the crossroads: where do we go from here?
Models of developmental disorders have often focused on fractionating and describing patterns of strength and weaknesses in a given disorder, leaving behind the bulk of theoretical advances in our understanding of the emergent nature of some brain functions during development (Karmiloff-Smith, 1998; Johnson et al., 2005). A recent field of investigation focusing on infant siblings of children with autism has offered promise in contributing to our knowledge of the nature of this developmental
Concluding remarks
Recent advances in autism and in infancy research and the recent integration of these directions hold a lot of promise for solving some of the most difficult puzzles in autism. To understand the underlying causes of this condition and the process through which it emerges, any convincing model must encompass not only the symptoms which define the disorder but also other characteristics of the profile.
This is best achieved through making use of existing developmental models to motivate
Abbreviations
- A not B, Object/spatial retrieval, Boxes, Alternation, Spatial reversal, Visual paired comparison DNMS (delayed non-match to sample)
various tasks assessing executive functions; see cited publications for details
- ADI
autism diagnostic interview (standardized instrument for diagnosis)
- ADOS
autism diagnostic observation schedule (standardized instrument for diagnosis)
- ASD
autism spectrum disorders
- Aut
autism
- CA
chronological age
- CDI
McArthur communicative development inventory (standardized measure of
Acknowledgment
We would like to thank Leah Kaminsky for her help with reference materials, and Theodora Gliga, Atsuhi Senju, and Dick Aslin for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. This work was supported by the UK Medical Research Council Programme Grant G9715587.
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Effectiveness of creative arts-based parent training for parents with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
2021, Arts in PsychotherapyCitation Excerpt :The group leaders provided information about development, ASD-related symptoms, and early detection and intervention. For instance, materials for Session 2 included information about neurotypical development, neuroplasticity, and early brain and language development in children (Dawson, 2008; Elsabbagh & Johnson, 2007). Researchers have recognized the value of psychoeducation for parents and caregivers.
Social Cognition in Individuals With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: Recent Advances and Trends in Research
2017, International Review of Research in Developmental DisabilitiesCitation Excerpt :In one of the first studies of home videotapes of infants’ first birthdays, Osterling and Dawson (1994) found that failure to attend to other people's faces was the best discriminator between children with and without autism, suggesting that impairments in social cognition in children with autism might be due to early impairments in face processing abilities. The development and use of screening instruments designed to detect early signs of ASD (e.g., Baron-Cohen et al., 1996, Checklist for Autism in Toddlers—CHAT) made it possible to include in experimental studies younger children that met criteria for ASD (e.g., 18 months; see Charman et al., 1997), but the majority of findings potentially relevant for uncovering the developmental origins of the sociocognitive impairments associated with autism have come from prospective studies of the developmental trajectories of very young siblings of children already diagnosed with ASD (Elsabbagh & Johnson, 2007; Rogers, 2009; Yirmiya & Sally Ozonoff, 2007). The likelihood of developing ASD for these infants with an affected sibling is about five times higher than that of infants from families with no history of ASD (Ozonoff et al., 2011).
Autism and the Social Brain: The First-Year Puzzle
2016, Biological PsychiatryEarly detection of autism spectrum disorders: Emerging symptoms and biomarkers
2016, Bulletin de l'Academie Nationale de Medecine