Children with autism fail to orient to naturally occurring social stimuli

Short-latency preference for faces in primate superior colliculus depends on visual cortex

Face processing is fundamental to primates and has been extensively studied in higher-order visual cortex. Here, we report that visual neurons in the midbrain superior colliculus (SC) of macaque monkeys display a preference for images of faces. This preference emerges within 40 ms of stimulus onset-well before "face patches" in visual cortex-and, at the population level, can be used to distinguish faces from other visual objects with accuracies of ∼80%. This short-latency face preference in SC depends on signals routed through early visual cortex because inactivating the lateral geniculate nucleus, the key relay from retina to cortex, virtually eliminates visual responses in SC, including face-related activity. These results reveal an unexpected circuit in the primate visual system for rapidly detecting faces in the periphery, complementing the higher-order areas needed for recognizing individual faces.

Strategic social decision making undergoes significant changes in typically developing and autistic early adolescents

Information sampling about others' trustworthiness prior to cooperation allows humans to minimize the risk of exploitation. Here, we examined whether early adolescence or preadolescence, a stage defined as in between childhood and adolescence, is a significant developmental period for strategic social decisions. We also sought to characterize differences between autistic children and their typically developing (TD) peers. TD (N = 48) and autistic (N = 56) 8- to 12-year-olds played an online information sampling trust game. While both groups adapted their information sampling and cooperation to the various trustworthiness levels of the trustees, groups differed in how age and social skills modulated task behavior. In the TD group social skills were a stronger overall predictor of task behavior. In the autistic group, age was a stronger predictor and interacted with social skills. Computational modeling revealed that both groups used the same heuristic information sampling strategy-albeit older TD children were more efficient as reflected by decreasing decision noise with age. Autistic children had lower prior beliefs about the trustee's trustworthiness compared to TD children. These lower priors indicate that children believed the trustees to be less trustworthy. Lower priors scaled with lower social skills across groups. Notably, groups did not differ in prior uncertainty, meaning that the priors of TD and autistic children were equally strong. Taken together, we found significant development in information sampling and cooperation in early adolescence and nuanced differences between TD and autistic children. Our study highlights the importance of deep phenotyping of children including clinical measures, behavioral experiments and computational modeling. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We specified how early adolescents with and without an autism diagnosis sampled information about their interaction partners and made cooperation decisions in a strategic game. Early adolescence is a significant developmental period for strategic decision making, marked by significant changes in information sampling efficiency and adaptivity to the partner's behavior. Autistic and non-autistic groups differed in how age and social skills modulated task behavior; in non-autistic children behavior was more indicative of overall social skills. Computational modeling revealed differences between autistic and non-autistic groups in their initial beliefs about cooperation partners; autistic children expected their partners to be less trustworthy.

Dissociation Between Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Statistical Learning in Children with Autism

Statistical learning (SL), the ability to detect and extract regularities from inputs, is considered a domain-general building block for typical language development. We compared 55 verbal children with autism (ASD, 6-12 years) and 50 typically-developing children in four SL tasks. The ASD group exhibited reduced learning in the linguistic SL tasks (syllable and letter), but showed intact learning for the nonlinguistic SL tasks (tone and image). In the ASD group, better linguistic SL was associated with higher language skills measured by parental report and sentence recall. Therefore, the atypicality of SL in autism is not domain-general but tied to specific processing constraints related to verbal stimuli. Our findings provide a novel perspective for understanding language heterogeneity in autism.

Infants' brain responses to social interaction predict future language growth

In face-to-face interactions with infants, human adults exhibit a species-specific communicative signal. Adults present a distinctive "social ensemble": they use infant-directed speech (parentese), respond contingently to infants' actions and vocalizations, and react positively through mutual eye-gaze and smiling. Studies suggest that this social ensemble is essential for initial language learning. Our hypothesis is that the social ensemble attracts attentional systems to speech and that sensorimotor systems prepare infants to respond vocally, both of which advance language learning. Using infant magnetoencephalography (MEG), we measure 5-month-old infants' neural responses during live verbal face-to-face (F2F) interaction with an adult (social condition) and during a control (nonsocial condition) in which the adult turns away from the infant to speak to another person. Using a longitudinal design, we tested whether infants' brain responses to these conditions at 5 months of age predicted their language growth at five future time points. Brain areas involved in attention (right hemisphere inferior frontal, right hemisphere superior temporal, and right hemisphere inferior parietal) show significantly higher theta activity in the social versus nonsocial condition. Critical to theory, we found that infants' neural activity in response to F2F interaction in attentional and sensorimotor regions significantly predicted future language development into the third year of life, more than 2 years after the initial measurements. We develop a view of early language acquisition that underscores the centrality of the social ensemble, and we offer new insight into the neurobiological components that link infants' language learning to their early brain functioning during social interaction.

Attention toward Social and Non-Social Stimuli in Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Paired Preference Eye-Tracking Study

Different dimensions of visual attention to social (human faces) and non-social stimuli (objects) were assessed in 19 preschool children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and 19 typically developing (TD) age, gender, and IQ-matched controls through an original paired preference eye-tracking paradigm. The present study found a significantly reduced attentional bias toward human faces in children with ASD compared to TD controls. The analysis of the total fixation time showed a significantly reduced preference for faces in children with ASD compared to TD children. Moreover, while TD children showed a significant preference for the face over the object, children in the ASD group observed the two paired pictures for a similar amount of time, thus showing no preference. Besides, children with ASD paid significantly more sustained attention to the objects than TD children. Children in the TD group paid greater sustained attention to the faces over the objects, while children in the ASD group did not differentiate between objects and faces. Finally, an age effect was found in ASD, as younger children in the group tended to prefer objects and to show more sustained attention towards them. Overall, these findings add to the literature on anomalies in attention toward social and non-social stimuli in young children with ASD compared to their TD counterparts. These results are discussed in the light of previous studies and suggest possible directions for future research.

Autistic Individuals Do Not Alter Visual Processing Strategy During Encoding Versus Recognition of Faces: A Hidden Markov Modeling Approach

PURPOSE

Visual face recognition-the ability to encode, discriminate, and recognize the faces of others-is fundamentally supported by eye movements and is a common source of difficulty for autistic individuals. We aimed to evaluate how visual processing strategies (i.e., eye movement patterns) directly support encoding and recognition of faces in autistic and neurotypical (NT) individuals.

METHODS

We used a hidden Markov modeling approach to evaluate the spatiotemporal dynamics of eye movements in autistic (n = 15) and neurotypical (NT) adolescents (n = 17) during a face identity recognition task.

RESULTS

We discovered distinct eye movement patterns among all participants, which included a focused and exploratory strategy. When evaluating change in visual processing strategy across encoding and recognition phases, autistic individuals did not shift their eye movement patterns like their NT peers, who shifted to a more exploratory visual processing strategy during recognition.

CONCLUSION

These findings suggest that autistic individuals do not modulate their visual processing strategy across encoding and recognition of faces, which may be an indicator of less efficient face processing.

Neonatal Nucleus Accumbens Microstructure Modulates Individual Susceptibility to Preconception Maternal Stress in Relation to Externalizing Behaviors

OBJECTIVE

Maternal stress influences in utero brain development and is a modifiable risk factor for offspring psychopathologies. Reward circuitry dysfunction underlies various internalizing and externalizing psychopathologies. This study examined (1) the association between maternal stress and microstructural characteristics of the neonatal nucleus accumbens (NAcc), a major node of the reward circuitry, and (2) whether neonatal NAcc microstructure modulates individual susceptibility to maternal stress in relation to childhood behavioral problems.

METHOD

K-means longitudinal cluster analysis was performed to determine trajectories of maternal stress measures (Perceived Stress Scale [PSS], hair cortisol) from preconception to the third trimester. Neonatal NAcc microstructural measures (orientation density index [ODI] and intracellular volume fraction [ICVF]) were compared across trajectories. We then examined the interaction between maternal stress and neonatal NAcc microstructure on child internalizing and externalizing behaviors, assessed between ages 3 and 4 years.

RESULTS

Two trajectories of maternal stress magnitude ("low"/"high") were identified for both PSS (n = 287) and hair cortisol (n = 336). Right neonatal NAcc ODI (rNAcc-ODI) was significantly lower in "low" relative to "high" PSS trajectories (n = 77, p = .04). PSS at preconception had the strongest association with rNAcc-ODI (r = 0.293, p = .029). No differences in NAcc microstructure were found between hair cortisol trajectories. A significant interaction between preconception PSS and rNAcc-ODI on externalizing behavior was observed (n = 47, p = .047).

CONCLUSION

Our study showed that the preconception period contributes to in utero NAcc development, and that NAcc microstructure modulates individual susceptibility to preconception maternal stress in relation to externalizing problems.

Support vector machine prediction of individual Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) scores based on neural responses during live eye-to-eye contact

Social difficulties during interactions with others are central to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Understanding the links between these social difficulties and their underlying neural processes is a primary aim focused on improved diagnosis and treatment. In keeping with this goal, we have developed a multivariate classification method based on neural data acquired by functional near infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS, during live eye-to-eye contact with adults who were either typically developed (TD) or individuals with ASD. The ASD diagnosis was based on the gold-standard Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) which also provides an index of symptom severity. Using a nested cross-validation method, a support vector machine (SVM) was trained to discriminate between ASD and TD groups based on the neural responses during eye-to-eye contact. ADOS scores were not applied in the classification training. To test the hypothesis that SVM identifies neural activity patterns related to one of the neural mechanisms underlying the behavioral symptoms of ASD, we determined the correlation coefficient between the SVM scores and the individual ADOS scores. Consistent with the hypothesis, the correlation between observed and predicted ADOS scores was 0.72 (p < 0.002). Findings suggest that multivariate classification methods combined with the live interaction paradigm of eye-to-eye contact provide a promising approach to link neural processes and social difficulties in individuals with ASD.

Autistic traits and speech perception in social and non-social noises

Individuals with the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience difficulties in perceiving speech in background noises with temporal dips; they also lack social orienting. We tested two hypotheses: (1) the higher the autistic traits, the lower the performance in the speech-in-noise test, and (2) individuals with high autistic traits experience greater difficulty in perceiving speech, especially in the non-vocal noise, because of their attentional bias toward non-vocal sounds. Thirty-eight female Japanese university students participated in an experiment measuring their ability to perceive speech in the presence of noise. Participants were asked to detect Japanese words embedded in vocal and non-vocal background noises with temporal dips. We found a marginally significant effect of autistic traits on speech perception performance, suggesting a trend that favors the first hypothesis. However, caution is needed in this interpretation because the null hypothesis is not rejected. No significant interaction was found between the types of background noise and autistic traits, indicating that the second hypothesis was not supported. This might be because individuals with high autistic traits in the general population have a weaker attentional bias toward non-vocal sounds than those with ASD or to the explicit instruction given to attend to the target speech.

Individual Differences in Multisensory Attention Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Predict Language and Symptom Severity: Evidence from the Multisensory Attention Assessment Protocol (MAAP)

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show atypical attention, particularly for social events. The new Multisensory Attention Assessment Protocol (MAAP) assesses fine-grained individual differences in attention disengagement, maintenance, and audiovisual matching for social and nonsocial events. We investigated the role of competing stimulation on attention, and relations with language and symptomatology in children with ASD and typical controls. Findings revealed: (1) the MAAP differentiated children with ASD from controls, (2) greater attention to social events predicted better language for both groups and lower symptom severity in children with ASD, (3) different pathways from attention to language were evident in children with ASD versus controls. The MAAP provides an ideal attention assessment for revealing diagnostic group differences and relations with outcomes.

Effect of race on Gaze Cueing in adults with high and low autistic traits

BACKGROUND

Observing the direction of gaze of another person leads to shifting of attention in the same direction (gaze-cueing effect - GCE), a social-cognitive ability known as joint or social attention. Racial attitudes can influence the magnitude of GCE since it has been shown that White people showing a strong race ingroup preference follow the gaze only of White, and not Black, faces. Individuals with high autistic traits have difficulties in social-cognitive abilities that can disrupt the learning of socially shared racial attitudes. Our aim was to investigate in White Italian adults whether individuals with higher autistic traits (measured by the Autism Spectrum Quotient) show reduced implicit racial bias (measured by the Implicit Association Test) and if this bias would lead to differences in the gaze cueing effect (GCE) triggered by gaze direction of faces of different races (measured by the Gaze Cueing Task).

METHODS

In an online study, participants (N = 165; 132 females; Mean age = 22.9; SD = 4.76) filled in the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) questionnaire, then performed a Gaze Cueing Task, followed and by an Implicit Association Test.

RESULTS

Linear regression and linear mixed model analyses showed in the IAT task the presence of the same implicit ingroup bias for all participants, which was not predicted by the AQ score, while in the Gaze Cueing Task the GCE differed depending on the AQ score of the participants. Specifically, participants with low-medium, medium, and medium-high autistic traits (AQ = -1SD; AQ = mean; AQ =  + 1SD respectively) presented the GCE for both ingroup and outgroup cueing faces, whereas participants with high autistic traits (AQ =  + 2SD) only for ingroup faces.

CONCLUSIONS

In White Italian adults the presence of an implicit ingroup bias seems to influence the GCE, but it is not always true that the individuals showing an implicit ingroup bias do not orient their attention in the direction of gaze of the outgroup individuals. Instead, the GCE seems to be modulated by the level of autistic traits. That is, individuals with higher autistic traits seem to prioritize joint attention with only their ingroup members.

Short-latency preference for faces in the primate superior colliculus

Face processing is fundamental to primates and has been extensively studied in higher-order visual cortex. Here we report that visual neurons in the midbrain superior colliculus (SC) display a preference for faces, that the preference emerges within 50ms of stimulus onset - well before "face patches" in visual cortex - and that this activity can distinguish faces from other visual objects with accuracies of ~80%. This short-latency preference in SC depends on signals routed through early visual cortex, because inactivating the lateral geniculate nucleus, the key relay from retina to cortex, virtually eliminates visual responses in SC, including face-related activity. These results reveal an unexpected circuit in the primate visual system for rapidly detecting faces in the periphery, complementing the higher-order areas needed for recognizing individual faces.

Autistic adults benefit from and enjoy learning via social interaction as much as neurotypical adults do

BACKGROUND

Autistic people show poor processing of social signals (i.e. about the social world). But how do they learn via social interaction?

METHODS

68 neurotypical adults and 60 autistic adults learned about obscure items (e.g. exotic animals) over Zoom (i) in a live video-call with the teacher, (ii) from a recorded learner-teacher interaction video and (iii) from a recorded teacher-alone video. Data were analysed via analysis of variance and multi-level regression models.

RESULTS

Live teaching provided the most optimal learning condition, with no difference between groups. Enjoyment was the strongest predictor of learning: both groups enjoyed the live interaction significantly more than other condition and reported similar anxiety levels across conditions.

LIMITATIONS

Some of the autistic participants were self-diagnosed-however, further analysis where these participants were excluded showed the same results. Recruiting participants over online platforms may have introduced bias in our sample. Future work should investigate learning in social contexts via diverse sources (e.g. schools).

CONCLUSIONS

These findings advocate for a distinction between learning about the social versus learning via the social: cognitive models of autism should be revisited to consider social interaction not just as a puzzle to decode but rather a medium through which people, including neuro-diverse groups, learn about the world around them. Trial registration Part of this work has been pre-registered before data collection https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/5PGA3.

Examining the latent structure and correlates of sensory reactivity in autism: a multi-site integrative data analysis by the autism sensory research consortium

BACKGROUND

Differences in responding to sensory stimuli, including sensory hyperreactivity (HYPER), hyporeactivity (HYPO), and sensory seeking (SEEK) have been observed in autistic individuals across sensory modalities, but few studies have examined the structure of these "supra-modal" traits in the autistic population.

METHODS

Leveraging a combined sample of 3868 autistic youth drawn from 12 distinct data sources (ages 3-18 years and representing the full range of cognitive ability), the current study used modern psychometric and meta-analytic techniques to interrogate the latent structure and correlates of caregiver-reported HYPER, HYPO, and SEEK within and across sensory modalities. Bifactor statistical indices were used to both evaluate the strength of a "general response pattern" factor for each supra-modal construct and determine the added value of "modality-specific response pattern" scores (e.g., Visual HYPER). Bayesian random-effects integrative data analysis models were used to examine the clinical and demographic correlates of all interpretable HYPER, HYPO, and SEEK (sub)constructs.

RESULTS

All modality-specific HYPER subconstructs could be reliably and validly measured, whereas certain modality-specific HYPO and SEEK subconstructs were psychometrically inadequate when measured using existing items. Bifactor analyses supported the validity of a supra-modal HYPER construct (ωH = .800) but not a supra-modal HYPO construct (ωH = .653), and supra-modal SEEK models suggested a more limited version of the construct that excluded some sensory modalities (ωH = .800; 4/7 modalities). Modality-specific subscales demonstrated significant added value for all response patterns. Meta-analytic correlations varied by construct, although sensory features tended to correlate most with other domains of core autism features and co-occurring psychiatric symptoms (with general HYPER and speech HYPO demonstrating the largest numbers of practically significant correlations).

LIMITATIONS

Conclusions may not be generalizable beyond the specific pool of items used in the current study, which was limited to caregiver report of observable behaviors and excluded multisensory items that reflect many "real-world" sensory experiences.

CONCLUSION

Of the three sensory response patterns, only HYPER demonstrated sufficient evidence for valid interpretation at the supra-modal level, whereas supra-modal HYPO/SEEK constructs demonstrated substantial psychometric limitations. For clinicians and researchers seeking to characterize sensory reactivity in autism, modality-specific response pattern scores may represent viable alternatives that overcome many of these limitations.

Infant visual preference for the mother's face and longitudinal associations with emotional reactivity in the first year of life

Past research has focused on infants' visual preference for the mother's face, however it is still unknown how these responses change over time and what factors associate with such changes. A longitudinal study (N ~ 60) was conducted to investigate the trajectories of infant visual preference for the mother's face and how these are related to the development of emotional reactivity in the first year of life. Two face stimuli (i.e., the infant's mother and a consistent stranger face) were used in a visual preference task at 2 weeks, 4, 6, and 9 months of age. At each time point, mothers were asked to complete a measure of infant temperament via standardised questionnaires. Our results show that while at 2 weeks, 4 months and 9 months of age infants looked equally at both faces, infants at 6 months looked significantly longer at their mother's face. We also observed prospective associations with emotional reactivity variables so that infants who looked longer at the mother's face at 6 months showed higher falling reactivity, i.e. a better ability to recover from distress, at 9 months. We discuss these findings in light of the roles that both infant development and the caregiver play in emerging emotion regulation capacities during the first year of life.

The role of the prefrontal cortex in social interactions of animal models and the implications for autism spectrum disorder

Social interaction is a complex behavior which requires the individual to integrate various internal processes, such as social motivation, social recognition, salience, reward, and emotional state, as well as external cues informing the individual of others' behavior, emotional state and social rank. This complex phenotype is susceptible to disruption in humans affected by neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Multiple pieces of convergent evidence collected from studies of humans and rodents suggest that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a pivotal role in social interactions, serving as a hub for motivation, affiliation, empathy, and social hierarchy. Indeed, disruption of the PFC circuitry results in social behavior deficits symptomatic of ASD. Here, we review this evidence and describe various ethologically relevant social behavior tasks which could be employed with rodent models to study the role of the PFC in social interactions. We also discuss the evidence linking the PFC to pathologies associated with ASD. Finally, we address specific questions regarding mechanisms employed by the PFC circuitry that may result in atypical social interactions in rodent models, which future studies should address.

Social visual preference mediates the effect of cortical thickness on symptom severity in children with autism spectrum disorder

Background

Evidence suggests that there is a robust relationship between altered neuroanatomy and autistic symptoms in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Social visual preference, which is regulated by specific brain regions, is also related to symptom severity. However, there were a few studies explored the potential relationships among brain structure, symptom severity, and social visual preference.

Methods

The current study investigated relationships among brain structure, social visual preference, and symptom severity in 43 children with ASD and 26 typically developing (TD) children (aged 2-6 years).

Results

Significant differences were found in social visual preference and cortical morphometry between the two groups. Decreased percentage of fixation time in digital social images (%DSI) was negatively related to not only the thickness of the left fusiform gyrus (FG) and right insula, but also the Calibrated Severity Scores for the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Social Affect (ADOS-SA-CSS). Mediation analysis showed that %DSI partially mediated the relationship between neuroanatomical alterations (specifically, thickness of the left FG and right insula) and symptom severity.

Conclusion

These findings offer initial evidence that atypical neuroanatomical alterations may not only result in direct effects on symptom severity but also lead to indirect effects on symptom severity through social visual preference. This finding enhances our understanding of the multiple neural mechanisms implicated in ASD.

Acoustic and Semantic Processing of Auditory Scenes in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

PURPOSE

Processing real-world sounds requires acoustic and higher-order semantic information. We tested the theory that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show enhanced processing of acoustic features and impaired processing of semantic information.

METHODS

We used a change deafness task that required detection of speech and non-speech auditory objects being replaced and a speech-in-noise task using spoken sentences that must be comprehended in the presence of background speech to examine the extent to which 7-15 year old children with ASD (n = 27) rely on acoustic and semantic information, compared to age-matched (n = 27) and IQ-matched (n = 27) groups of typically developing (TD) children. Within a larger group of 7-15 year old TD children (n = 105) we correlated IQ, ASD symptoms, and the use of acoustic and semantic information.

RESULTS

Children with ASD performed worse overall at the change deafness task relative to the age-matched TD controls, but they did not differ from IQ-matched controls. All groups utilized acoustic and semantic information similarly and displayed an attentional bias towards changes that involved the human voice. Similarly, for the speech-in-noise task, age-matched-but not IQ-matched-TD controls performed better overall than the ASD group. However, all groups used semantic context to a similar degree. Among TD children, neither IQ nor the presence of ASD symptoms predict the use of acoustic or semantic information.

CONCLUSION

Children with and without ASD used acoustic and semantic information similarly during auditory change deafness and speech-in-noise tasks.

Observing a trained demonstrator influences associative appetitive learning in rats

The ability to acquire information about the environment through social observation or instruction is an essential form of learning in humans and other animals. Here, we assessed the ability of rats to acquire an association between a light stimulus and the presentation of a reward that is either hidden (sucrose solution) or visible (food pellet) via observation of a trained demonstrator. Subsequent training of observers on the light-reward association indicated that while observation alone was not sufficient for observers to acquire the association, contact with the reward location was higher in observers that were paired with a demonstrator. However, this was only true when the light cue predicted a sucrose reward. Additionally, we found that in the visible reward condition, levels of demonstrator orienting and food cup contact during the observation period tended to be positively correlated with the corresponding behaviour of their observer. This relationship was only seen during later sessions of observer training. Together, these results suggest that while our models were not sufficient to induce associative learning through observation alone, demonstrator behaviour during observation did influence how their paired observer's behavioural response to the cue evolved over the course of direct individual training.

Research on social attention in autism and the challenges of the research domain criteria (RDoC) framework

The fuzzy nature of categories of psychopathology, such as autism, leads to significant research challenges. Alternatively, focusing research on the study of a common set of important and well-defined psychological constructs across psychiatric conditions may make the fundamental etiological processes of psychopathology easier to discern and treat (Cuthbert, 2022). The development of the research domain criteria (RDoC) framework is designed to guide this new research approach (Insel et al., 2010). However, progress in research may be expected to continually refine and reorganize the understanding of the specifics of these mental processes (Cuthbert & Insel, 2013). Moreover, knowledge gleaned from the study of both normative and atypical development can be mutually informative in the evolution of our understanding of these fundamental processes. A case in point is the study of social attention. This Autism 101 commentary provides an educational summary of research over the last few decades indicates that social attention is major construct in the study of human social-cognitive development, autism and other forms of psychopathology. The commentary also describes how this research can inform the Social Process dimension of the RDoC framework.

Perception of audio-visual synchrony in infants at elevated likelihood of developing autism spectrum disorder

The inability to perceive audio-visual speech as a unified event may contribute to social impairments and language deficits in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, we examined and compared two groups of infants on their sensitivity to audio-visual asynchrony for a social (speaking face) and non-social event (bouncing ball) and assessed the relations between multisensory integration and language production. Infants at elevated likelihood of developing ASD were less sensitive to audio-visual synchrony for the social event than infants without elevated likelihood. Among infants without elevated likelihood, greater sensitivity to audio-visual synchrony for the social event was associated with a larger productive vocabulary.

CONCLUSION

Findings suggest that early deficits in multisensory integration may impair language development among infants with elevated likelihood of developing ASD.

WHAT IS KNOWN

•Perceptual integration of auditory and visual cues within speech is important for language development. •Prior work suggests that children with ASD are less sensitive to the temporal synchrony within audio-visual speech.

WHAT IS NEW

•In this study, infants at elevated likelihood of developing ASD showed a larger temporal binding window for adynamic social event (Speaking Face) than TD infants, suggesting less efficient multisensory integration.

Combining the Projective Consciousness Model and Virtual Humans for immersive psychological research: a proof-of-concept simulating a ToM assessment

Relating explicit psychological mechanisms and observable behaviours is a central aim of psychological and behavioural science. One of the challenges is to understand and model the role of consciousness, and in particular its subjective perspective as an internal level of representation (including for social cognition) in the governance of behaviour. Toward this aim, we implemented the principles of the Projective Consciousness Model (PCM) into artificial agents embodied as virtual humans, extending a previous implementation of the model. Our goal was to offer a proof-of-concept, based purely on simulations, as a basis for a future methodological framework. Its overarching aim is to be able to assess hidden psychological parameters in human participants, based on a model relevant to consciousness research, in the context of experiments in virtual reality. As an illustration of the approach, we focused on simulating the role of Theory of Mind (ToM) in the choice of strategic behaviours of approach and avoidance to optimise the satisfaction of agents’ preferences. We designed a main experiment in a virtual environment that could be used with real humans, allowing us to classify behaviours as a function of order of ToM, up to the second order. We show that agents using the PCM demonstrated expected behaviours with consistent parameters of ToM in this experiment. We also show that the agents could be used to estimate correctly each other’s order of ToM. Furthermore, in a supplementary experiment, we demonstrated how the agents could simultaneously estimate order of ToM and preferences attributed to others to optimize behavioural outcomes. Future studies will empirically assess and fine tune the framework with real humans in virtual reality experiments.

Patterns of Arc mRNA expression in the rat brain following dual recall of fear- and reward-based socially acquired information

Learning can occur via direct experience or through observation of another individual (i.e., social learning). While research focused on understanding the neural mechanisms of direct learning is prevalent, less work has examined the brain circuitry mediating the acquisition and recall of socially acquired information. Here, we aimed to further elucidate the mechanisms underlying recall of socially acquired information by having male and female rats sequentially recall a socially transmitted food preference (STFP) and a fear association via fear conditioning by-proxy (FCbP). Brain tissue was processed for mRNA expression of the immediate early gene (IEG) Arc, which expresses in the nucleus following transcription before migrating to the cytoplasm over the next 25 min. Given this timeframe, we could identify whether Arc transcription was triggered by STFP recall, FCbP recall, or both. Contrary to past research, we found no differences in any Arc expression measures across a number of prefrontal regions and the ventral CA3 of the hippocampus between controls, demonstrators, and observers. We theorize that these results may indicate that relatively little Arc-dependent neural restructuring is taking place in the prefrontal cortices and ventral CA3 following recall of recently socially acquired information or directly acquired fear associations in these areas.

Examining the Latent Structure and Correlates of Sensory Reactivity in Autism: A Multi-site Integrative Data Analysis by the Autism Sensory Research Consortium

Background Differences in responding to sensory stimuli, including sensory hyperreactivity (HYPER), hyporeactivity (HYPO), and sensory seeking (SEEK) have been observed in autistic individuals across sensory modalities, but few studies have examined the structure of these "supra-modal" traits in the autistic population. Methods Leveraging a combined sample of 3,868 autistic youth drawn from 12 distinct data sources (ages 3-18 years and representing the full range of cognitive ability), the current study used modern psychometric and meta-analytic techniques to interrogate the latent structure and correlates of caregiver-reported HYPER, HYPO, and SEEK within and across sensory modalities. Bifactor statistical indices were used to both evaluate the strength of a "general response pattern" factor for each supra-modal construct and determine the added value of "modality-specific response pattern" scores (e.g., Visual HYPER). Bayesian random-effects integrative data analysis models were used to examine the clinical and demographic correlates of all interpretable HYPER, HYPO and SEEK (sub)constructs. Results All modality-specific HYPER subconstructs could be reliably and validly measured, whereas certain modality-specific HYPO and SEEK subconstructs were psychometrically inadequate when measured using existing items. Bifactor analyses unambiguously supported the validity of a supra-modal HYPER construct (ω H  = .800), whereas a coherent supra-modal HYPO construct was not supported (ω H  = .611), and supra-modal SEEK models suggested a more limited version of the construct that excluded some sensory modalities (ω H  = .799; 4/7 modalities). Within each sensory construct, modality-specific subscales demonstrated substantial added value beyond the supra-modal score. Meta-analytic correlations varied by construct, although sensory features tended to correlate most strongly with other domains of core autism features and co-occurring psychiatric symptoms. Certain subconstructs within the HYPO and SEEK domains were also associated with lower adaptive behavior scores. Limitations: Conclusions may not be generalizable beyond the specific pool of items used in the current study, which was limited to parent-report of observable behaviors and excluded multisensory items that reflect many "real-world" sensory experiences. Conclusion Psychometric issues may limit the degree to which some measures of supra-modal HYPO/SEEK can be interpreted. Depending on the research question at hand, modality-specific response pattern scores may represent a valid alternative method of characterizing sensory reactivity in autism.

Evaluating causal psychological models: A study of language theories of autism using a large sample

We used a large convenience sample (n = 22,223) from the Simons Powering Autism Research (SPARK) dataset to evaluate causal, explanatory theories of core autism symptoms. In particular, the data-items collected supported the testing of theories that posited altered language abilities as cause of social withdrawal, as well as alternative theories that competed with these language theories. Our results using this large dataset converge with the evolution of the field in the decades since these theories were first proposed, namely supporting primary social withdrawal (in some cases of autism) as a cause of altered language development, rather than vice versa. To accomplish the above empiric goals, we used a highly theory-constrained approach, one which differs from current data-driven modeling trends but is coherent with a very recent resurgence in theory-driven psychology. In addition to careful explication and formalization of theoretical accounts, we propose three principles for future work of this type: specification, quantification, and integration. Specification refers to constraining models with pre-existing data, from both outside and within autism research, with more elaborate models and more veridical measures, and with longitudinal data collection. Quantification refers to using continuous measures of both psychological causes and effects, as well as weighted graphs. This approach avoids "universality and uniqueness" tests that hold that a single cognitive difference could be responsible for a heterogeneous and complex behavioral phenotype. Integration of multiple explanatory paths within a single model helps the field examine for multiple contributors to a single behavioral feature or to multiple behavioral features. It also allows integration of explanatory theories across multiple current-day diagnoses and as well as typical development.

The impact of low vision on social function: The potential importance of lost visual social cues

Visual cues usually play a vital role in social interaction. As well as being the primary cue for identifying other people, visual cues also provide crucial non-verbal social information via both facial expressions and body language. One consequence of vision loss is the need to rely on non-visual cues during social interaction. Although verbal cues can carry a significant amount of information, this information is often not available to an untrained listener. Here, we review the current literature examining potential ways that the loss of social information due to vision loss might impact social functioning. A large number of studies suggest that low vision and blindness is a risk factor for anxiety and depression. This relationship has been attributed to multiple factors, including anxiety about disease progression, and impairments to quality of life that include difficulties reading, and a lack of access to work and social activities. However, our review suggests a potential additional contributing factor to reduced quality of life that has been hitherto overlooked: blindness may make it more difficult to effectively engage in social interactions, due to a loss of visual information. The current literature suggests it might be worth considering training in voice discrimination and/or recognition when carrying out rehabilitative training in late blind individuals.

The socialization of modality capital in sign language ecologies: A classroom example

Gaze behavior is an important component of children’s language, cognitive, and sociocultural development. This is especially true for young deaf children acquiring a signed language—if they are not looking at the language model, they are not getting linguistic input. Deaf caregivers engage their deaf infants and toddlers using visual and tactile strategies to draw in, support, and promote their child’s visual attention; we argue that these caregiver actions create a developmental niche that establishes the visual modality capital their child needs for successful sign language learning. But most deaf children do not have deaf signing parents (reportedly over 90%) and they will need to rely on adult signing teachers if they are to acquire a signed language at an early age. This study examines classroom interactions between a Deaf teacher, her teacher’s aide, and six deaf preschoolers to document the teachers’ “everyday practices” as they socialize the gaze behavior of these children. Utilizing a detailed behavioral and linguistic analysis of two video-recorded book-sharing contexts, we present data summarizing the teacher’s attention-getting actions directed toward the children and the discourse-embedded cues that signal the teacher’s expectations for student participation in the signed conversation. We observed that the teacher’s behaviors differed according to the parent status of the deaf preschooler (Deaf parents vs. hearing parents) suggesting that Deaf children of Deaf parents arrive to the preschool classroom with well-developed self-regulation of their attention or gaze. The teachers also used more physical and explicit cueing with the deaf children of hearing parents—possibly to promote their ability to leverage the visual modality for sign language acquisition. We situate these socialization patterns within a framework that integrates notions of intuitive or indigenous practices, developmental niche, and modality capital. Implications for early childhood deaf education are also discussed.

Atypical gaze patterns in autistic adults are heterogeneous across but reliable within individuals

BACKGROUND

Across behavioral studies, autistic individuals show greater variability than typically developing individuals. However, it remains unknown to what extent this variability arises from heterogeneity across individuals, or from unreliability within individuals. Here, we focus on eye tracking, which provides rich dependent measures that have been used extensively in studies of autism. Autistic individuals have an atypical gaze onto both static visual images and dynamic videos that could be leveraged for diagnostic purposes if the above open question could be addressed.

METHODS

We tested three competing hypotheses: (1) that gaze patterns of autistic individuals are less reliable or noisier than those of controls, (2) that atypical gaze patterns are individually reliable but heterogeneous across autistic individuals, or (3) that atypical gaze patterns are individually reliable and also homogeneous among autistic individuals. We collected desktop-based eye tracking data from two different full-length television sitcom episodes, at two independent sites (Caltech and Indiana University), in a total of over 150 adult participants (N = 48 autistic individuals with IQ in the normal range, 105 controls) and quantified gaze onto features of the videos using automated computer vision-based feature extraction.

RESULTS

We found support for the second of these hypotheses. Autistic people and controls showed equivalently reliable gaze onto specific features of videos, such as faces, so much so that individuals could be identified significantly above chance using a fingerprinting approach from video epochs as short as 2 min. However, classification of participants into diagnostic groups based on their eye tracking data failed to produce clear group classifications, due to heterogeneity in the autistic group.

LIMITATIONS

Three limitations are the relatively small sample size, assessment across only two videos (from the same television series), and the absence of other dependent measures (e.g., neuroimaging or genetics) that might have revealed individual-level variability that was not evident with eye tracking. Future studies should expand to larger samples across longer longitudinal epochs, an aim that is now becoming feasible with Internet- and phone-based eye tracking.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings pave the way for the investigation of autism subtypes, and for elucidating the specific visual features that best discriminate gaze patterns-directions that will also combine with and inform neuroimaging and genetic studies of this complex disorder.

Auditory affective processing, musicality, and the development of misophonic reactions

Misophonia can be characterized both as a condition and as a negative affective experience. Misophonia is described as feeling irritation or disgust in response to hearing certain sounds, such as eating, drinking, gulping, and breathing. Although the earliest misophonic experiences are often described as occurring during childhood, relatively little is known about the developmental pathways that lead to individual variation in these experiences. This literature review discusses evidence of misophonic reactions during childhood and explores the possibility that early heightened sensitivities to both positive and negative sounds, such as to music, might indicate a vulnerability for misophonia and misophonic reactions. We will review when misophonia may develop, how it is distinguished from other auditory conditions (e.g., hyperacusis, phonophobia, or tinnitus), and how it relates to developmental disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder or Williams syndrome). Finally, we explore the possibility that children with heightened musicality could be more likely to experience misophonic reactions and develop misophonia.

Eye Tracking Study of Social Intensity on Social Orientation of Autistic Children

Some previous studies indicate that impaired social attention mainly results in social disorders in autistic children. In the social attention mode of autistic children, social orientation and joint attention are particularly important. The influence of different social intensity and ecological validity on them are worthy of further study. This study used realistic paintings with moderate ecological validity as experimental materials, to design isolated individual scene and social interaction scene, and to explore the impact of social interaction on the social orientation of autistic children. It found that in the scenes without social interaction, the attention patterns of autistic children and typical developing children were the same, while the attention patterns of autistic children were abnormal in the scenes with social interaction. From the eye tracking data, it was shown that the gaze processing process of autistic children was not as smooth as that of typical developing children. Compared with cartoons and other social scenes with low ecological validity, realistic painting could better restore the proportion of real scenes. Moreover, it could reduce the complexity of information which could not be done in real scenes. The findings of this study provide support for training and education of autistic children. Intervention with realistic paintings is conducive to the migration of autistic children.

Disrupted dynamic network reconfiguration of the brain functional networks of individuals with autism spectrum disorder

Human and animal studies on brain functions in subjects with autism spectrum disorder have confirmed the aberrant organization of functional networks. However, little is known about the neural features underlying these impairments.

Using community structure analyses (recruitment and integration), the current study explored the functional network features of individuals with autism spectrum disorder from one database (101 individuals with autism spectrum disorder and 120 healthy controls) and tested the replicability in an independent database (50 individuals with autism spectrum disorder and 74 healthy controls). Additionally, the study divided subjects into different age groups and tested the features in different subgroups.

As for recruitment, subjects with autism spectrum disorder had lower coefficients in the default mode network and basal ganglia network than healthy controls. The integration results showed that subjects with autism spectrum disorder had a lower coefficient than healthy controls in the default mode network -medial frontal network and basal ganglia network -limbic networks. The results for the default mode network were mostly replicated in the independent database, but the results for the basal ganglia network were not. The results for different age groups were also analyzed, and the replicability was tested in different databases.

The lower recruitment in subjects with autism spectrum disorder suggests that they are less efficient at engaging these networks when performing relevant tasks. The lower integration results suggest impaired flexibility in cognitive functions in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. All these findings might explain why subjects with autism spectrum disorder show impaired brain networks and have important therapeutic implications for developing potentially effective interventions.

Social anhedonia as a Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia 1-dependent phenotype

Deficits in social interaction or social cognition are key phenotypes in a variety of chronic mental diseases, yet, their modeling and molecular dissection are only in their infancy. The Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) signaling pathway is considered to play a role in different psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, and biopolar disorders. DISC1 is involved in regulating the dopaminergic neurotransmission in, among others, the mesolimbic reward system. A transgenic rat line tgDISC1 has been introduced as a model system to study behavioral phenotypes associated with abnormal DISC1 signaling pathways. Here, we evaluated the impact of impaired DISC1 signaling on social (social interaction) and non-social (sucrose) reward preferences in the tgDISC1 animal model. In a plus-maze setting, rats chose between the opportunity for social interaction with an unfamiliar juvenile conspecific (social reward) or drinking sweet solutions with variable sucrose concentrations (non-social reward). tgDISC1 rats differed from wild-type rats in their social, but not in their non-social reward preferences. Specifically, DISC1 rats showed a lower interest in interaction with the juvenile conspecific, but did not differ from wild-type rats in their preference for higher sucrose concentrations. These results suggest that disruptions of the DISC1 signaling pathway that is associated with altered dopamine transmission in the brain result in selective deficits in social motivation reminiscent of phenotypes seen in neuropsychiatric illness.

Perception of native and non-native phonemic contrasts in children with autistic spectrum disorder: effects of speaker variability

The current study investigated speech perception in children with ASD by directly comparing discrimination accuracy of phonemic contrasts in the native and non-native languages. The effect of speaker variability on phoneme perception was also examined. We also explored the relation between language impairment and accuracy in phoneme discrimination in children with ASD. Significant differences in performance were found between the ASD and TD groups on discrimination of the native phonemic contrasts. By contrast, no difference was found between the two groups on discrimination of the non-native phonemic contrasts. Further subgroup analysis revealed that the ALN group (ASD without language delay or impairment) showed significantly higher discrimination accuracy for the native syllable contrasts than the non-native counterpart. No significant difference was found in the discrimination accuracy between the native and non-native phonemic contrasts in the ALD group (ASD with language delay or impairment). The effect of speaker viability on phoneme discrimination was observed in the TD group but not in the ASD subgroups. Nonverbal reasoning ability was highly related to discrimination accuracy of both the native and non-native phonemic contrasts in children with ASD. The results of the present study suggest that speech perception in children with ASD is not as attuned to their native language as in their TD peers. Our findings also indicate that language delay or impairment is related to difficulty in perception of native phonemes in children with ASD.

Eye-tracking-based experimental paradigm to assess social-emotional abilities in young individuals with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities

Individuals with Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities (PIMD) experience a combination of severe cognitive and motor impairments frequently associated with additional sensory deficits and numerous medical disorders. The purpose of the present study was to propose an experimental paradigm based on eye-tracking that combines various pre-existing tasks from infancy research as an assessment tool. This would enable the investigation of social-emotional abilities in nine young individuals with PIMD through their visual preferences for different types of stimuli. The first objective was to test the feasibility of this paradigm, by expecting individuals to look more at the tasks’ presentation screen than elsewhere during its implementation. The second objective was to investigate whether PIMD individuals exhibit visual preferences for (a) biological (vs. non-biological) motion, (b) socially salient (vs. non-social) scenes, (c) the facial area of the eyes (vs. the mouth), (d) happy (vs. angry) faces, (e) objects of joint attention (vs. non-looked at ones), and for (f) prosocial (vs. anti-social) behaviors similar to those of a control group of typically developing children aged two years on average. Overall, the feasibility of this paradigm proved to be good, resulting in high individual looking rates that were not affected by the presentation or the content of the tasks. Analyses of individual social-emotional abilities, supported by the visual preference patterns of each PIMD individual, firstly revealed strong—but expected—variability both within and between subjects, and secondly highlighted some individual task-specific abilities although few similarities between these individual results and those of the control group were found. These findings underline the great relevance of using this type of paradigm for assessing PIMD individuals and thus contribute to a better understanding of their social and emotional development.

Repetitive Restricted Behaviors in Autism Spectrum Disorder: From Mechanism to Development of Therapeutics

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in social communication, social interaction, and repetitive restricted behaviors (RRBs). It is usually detected in early childhood. RRBs are behavioral patterns characterized by repetition, inflexibility, invariance, inappropriateness, and frequent lack of obvious function or specific purpose. To date, the classification of RRBs is contentious. Understanding the potential mechanisms of RRBs in children with ASD, such as neural connectivity disorders and abnormal immune functions, will contribute to finding new therapeutic targets. Although behavioral intervention remains the most effective and safe strategy for RRBs treatment, some promising drugs and new treatment options (e.g., supplementary and cell therapy) have shown positive effects on RRBs in recent studies. In this review, we summarize the latest advances of RRBs from mechanistic to therapeutic approaches and propose potential future directions in research on RRBs.

Development of an interactive tool of early social responsiveness to track autism risk in infants and toddlers

AIM

To evaluate the psychometric properties of a 4-minute assessment designed to identify early autism spectrum disorder (ASD) status through evaluation of early social responsiveness (ESR).

METHOD

This retrospective, preliminary study included children between 13 and 24 months (78 males, 79 females mean age 19.4mo, SD 3.1) from two independent data sets (an experimental/training sample [n=120] and a validation/test sample [n=37]). The ESR assessment examined social behaviors (e.g. eye contact, smiling, ease-of-social-engagement) across five common play activities (e.g. rolling a ball, looking at a book). Data analyses examined reliability and accuracy of the assessment in identifying ESR abilities and in discriminating children with and without ASD.

RESULTS

Results indicated adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the ESR assessment. Receiver operator curve analysis identified a cutoff score that discriminated infants with ASD-risk from peers in the training sample. This score yielded moderate sensitivity and high specificity for best-estimate ASD diagnosis in the validation sample.

INTERPRETATION

Preliminary findings indicated that brief, systematic observation of ESR may assist in discriminating infants with and without ASD, providing concrete evidence to validate or supplement parents', pediatricians', or clinicians' concerns. Future studies could examine the utility of ESR 'growth curves'.

Enhancing Joint Attention Skills in Children on the Autism Spectrum through an Augmented Reality Technology-Mediated Intervention

In the present study, the effects of an intervention based on an augmented reality technology called Pictogram Room were examined. The objective of the intervention was to improve the responding to joint attention (RJA) skills of gaze following and pointing in six children on the autism spectrum between 3 and 8 years old. A multiple baseline single-subject experimental design was conducted for 12 weeks in a school setting. Results indicated that all of the participant children improved performance in RJA following the intervention. Improvements were maintained over time and generalised to real-world situations. These findings demonstrate that autistic children can improve their RJA skills with a targeted and engaging intervention based on an accessible augmented reality technology tool.

The Bidirectional Social-Cognitive Mechanisms of the Social-Attention Symptoms of Autism

Differences in social attention development begin to be apparent in the 6th to 12th month of development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and theoretically reflect important elements of its neurodevelopmental endophenotype. This paper examines alternative conceptual views of these early social attention symptoms and hypotheses about the mechanisms involved in their development. One model emphasizes mechanism involved in the spontaneous allocation of attention to faces, or social orienting. Alternatively, another model emphasizes mechanisms involved in the coordination of attention with other people, or joint attention, and the socially bi-directional nature of its development. This model raises the possibility that atypical responses of children to the attention or the gaze of a social partner directed toward themselves may be as important in the development of social attention symptoms as differences in the development of social orienting. Another model holds that symptoms of social attention may be important to early development, but may not impact older individuals with ASD. The alterative model is that the social attention symptoms in infancy (social orienting and joint attention), and social cognitive symptoms in childhood and adulthood share common neurodevelopmental substrates. Therefore, differences in early social attention and later social cognition constitute a developmentally continuous axis of symptom presentation in ASD. However, symptoms in older individuals may be best measured with in vivo measures of efficiency of social attention and social cognition in social interactions rather than the accuracy of response on analog tests used in measures with younger children. Finally, a third model suggests that the social attention symptoms may not truly be a symptom of ASD. Rather, they may be best conceptualized as stemming from differences domain general attention and motivation mechanisms. The alternative argued for here that infant social attention symptoms meet all the criteria of a unique dimension of the phenotype of ASD and the bi-directional phenomena involved in social attention cannot be fully explained in terms of domain general aspects of attention development.

Intersubjectivity: Conceptual Considerations in Meaning-Making With a Clinical Illustration

This manuscript explores intersubjectivity through a conceptual construct for meaning-making that emphasizes three major interrelated elements-meaning making in interaction, making meaning with the body as well as the mind, and meaning making within an open dynamic system. These three elements are present in the literature on intersubjectivity with a wide range of terms used to describe various theoretical formulations. One objective of this manuscript is to illustrate how such a construct can be useful to understand the meaning-making observed in psychoanalysis, such as in the treatment of a young child on the autistic spectrum. The challenges in establishing an intersubjective state with a child on the autistic spectrum serve to highlight important features of intersubjectivity. As an important background to this clinical illustration, we illustrate the construct with the scientific paradigm of the well-known face-to-face still-face.

Development of a visual attention based decision support system for autism spectrum disorder screening

Visual attention of young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been well documented in the literature for the past 20 years. In this study, we developed a Decision Support System (DSS) that uses machine learning (ML) techniques to identify young children with ASD from typically developing (TD) children. Study participants included 26 to 36 months old young children with ASD (n = 61) and TD children (n = 72). The results showed that the proposed DSS achieved up to 87.5% success rate in the early assessment of ASD in young children. Findings suggested that visual attention is a unique, promising biomarker for early assessment of ASD. Study results were discussed, and suggestions for future research were provided.

Attenuated link between the medial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in children with autism spectrum disorder: Evidence from effective connectivity within the "social brain"

Although accumulating neuroimaging studies have reported that social behavior deficits in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are commonly attributed to the dysfunction of social brain regions underlying social cognition, the dynamic interaction within the social brain network and its association with social deficits remain unclear. Here, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data obtained from Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (I and II) were analyzed in 105 children with ASD and 102 demographically matched typically developing controls (TDCs) (age range: 7-12 years old). Term-based meta-analysis combined the prior reference and anatomical labeling were used to define the regions of interests of the social brain network, and multivariate Granger causality analysis with blind deconvolution was employed to assess the effective connectivity within the social brain network in the ASD and TDC groups. Between-group comparison revealed significantly attenuated effective connectivity from the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) to the bilateral amygdala in children with the ASD group compared with TDC group. In addition, raw values of the effective connectivity from the mPFC to the bilateral amygdala were used to predict social deficits in ASD. Our findings indicate the impaired mPFC-amygdala pathway and its association with social deficits in children with ASD and provide a new perspective into the neuropathology of the developing autistic brain.

Childhood diagnoses in individuals identified as autistics in adulthood

Background

Autism is a developmental condition, where symptoms are expected to occur in childhood, but a significant number of individuals are diagnosed with autism for the first time in adulthood. Here, we examine diagnoses given in childhood among individuals that are diagnosed with autism in adulthood, to investigate whether the late autism diagnosis might be explained by misdiagnosis in childhood or diagnostic overshadowing.

Methods

Through the Danish National Patient Registry, we identified individuals diagnosed with autism in adulthood (N = 2199), as well as a control sample with no records of an autism diagnosis (N = 460,798) and calculated how many had received different psychiatric or neurological diagnoses in childhood.

Results

We found that most childhood diagnoses were overrepresented in those with an adult autism diagnosis, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, affective disorders, anxiety, and stress disorders were the most prevalent childhood conditions in this group. However, 69% of males and 61% of females with adult autism diagnoses were not found to have received any of the investigated diagnoses before 18 years of age, and most childhood diagnoses were given after the age of 12.

Limitations

Milder to moderate cases of psychiatric conditions that have been solely treated by family physicians or school psychologists may not be fully included in our dataset. The study is based on data from the Danish health care system, and further research is needed to assess whether the findings can be generalized to other countries.

Conclusion

A majority of those with an adult autism diagnosis had no records of having received any of the investigated diagnoses in childhood. In these cases, the late autism diagnosis is therefore unlikely to be explained by either misdiagnosis or overshadowing. This result is at odds with the prevailing notion that autistic symptoms tend to diminish with age. Therefore, further research is warranted to examine how and if early signs of autism may have manifested among these individuals, and how similar they are to autistic people diagnosed earlier in their development.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13229-021-00478-y.

Auditory-Motor Mapping Training Facilitates Speech and Word Learning in Tone Language-Speaking Children With Autism: An Early Efficacy Study

PURPOSE

It has been reported that tone language-speaking children with autism demonstrate speech-specific lexical tone processing difficulty, although they have intact or even better-than-normal processing of nonspeech/melodic pitch analogues. In this early efficacy study, we evaluated the therapeutic potential of Auditory-Motor Mapping Training (AMMT) in facilitating speech and word output for Mandarin-speaking nonverbal and low-verbal children with autism, in comparison with a matched non-AMMT-based control treatment.

METHOD

Fifteen Mandarin-speaking nonverbal and low-verbal children with autism spectrum disorder participated and completed all the AMMT-based treatment sessions by intoning (singing) and tapping the target words delivered via an app, whereas another 15 participants received control treatment. Generalized linear mixed-effects models were created to evaluate speech production accuracy and word production intelligibility across different groups and conditions.

RESULTS

Results showed that the AMMT-based treatment provided a more effective training approach in accelerating the rate of speech (especially lexical tone) and word learning in the trained items. More importantly, the enhanced training efficacy on lexical tone acquisition remained at 2 weeks after therapy and generalized to untrained tones that were not practiced. Furthermore, the low-verbal participants showed higher improvement compared to the nonverbal participants.

CONCLUSIONS

These data provide the first empirical evidence for adopting the AMMT-based training to facilitate speech and word learning in Mandarin-speaking nonverbal and low-verbal children with autism. This early efficacy study holds promise for improving lexical tone production in Mandarin-speaking children with autism but should be further replicated in larger scale randomized studies. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16834627.

Attention Deficits Influence the Development of Motor Abnormalities in High Functioning Autism

Early attentional dysfunction is one of the most consistent findings in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including the high functioning autism (HFA). There are no studies that assess how the atypical attentional processes affect the motor functioning in HFA. In this study, we evaluated attentional and motor functioning in a sample of 15 drug-naive patients with HFA and 15 healthy children (HC), and possible link between attentional dysfunction and motor impairment in HFA. Compared to HC, HFA group was seriously impaired in a considerable number of attentional processes and showed a greater number of motor abnormalities. Significant correlations between attention deficits and motor abnormalities were observed in HFA group. These preliminary findings suggest that deficit of attentional processes can be implied in motor abnormalities in HFA.

Categorical Perception of Pitch Contours and Voice Onset Time in Mandarin-Speaking Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Purpose Previous studies have shown enhanced pitch and impaired time perception in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether such deviated patterns of auditory processing depending on acoustic dimensions would transfer to the higher level linguistic pitch and time processing. In this study, we compared the categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones and voice onset time (VOT) in Mandarin Chinese, which utilize pitch and time changes, respectively, to convey phonemic contrasts. Method The data were collected from 22 Mandarin-speaking adolescents with ASD and 20 age-matched neurotypical controls. In addition to the identification and discrimination tasks to test CP performance, all the participants were evaluated with their language ability and phonological working memory. Linear mixed-effects models were constructed to evaluate the identification and discrimination scores across different groups and conditions. Results The basic CP pattern of cross-boundary benefit when perceiving both native lexical tones and VOT was largely preserved in high-functioning adolescents with ASD. The degree of CP of lexical tones in ASD was similar to that in typical controls, whereas the degree of CP of VOT in ASD was greatly reduced. Furthermore, the degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with language ability and digit span in ASD participants. Conclusions These findings suggest that the unbalanced acoustic processing capacities for pitch and time can be generalized to the higher level linguistic processing in ASD. Furthermore, the higher degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with better language ability in Mandarin-speaking individuals with ASD.

Rehabilitation Educational Design for Children with Autism Based on the Radial Basis Function Neural Network

Children with autism need appropriate educational toys to assist rehabilitation training, so as to inhibit the development of autism. Toys and related treatments for children with autism can alleviate some of the deficits of children with autism. By using toys as stimuli and various sensations obtained by children with autism or toys as a result of reinforcement, the improvement of certain capabilities expected by related therapies can be achieved through the process of stimulation and reinforcement. However, in the process of pediatrics toy development, it is difficult for toy designers to assess whether the purpose of stimulation and reinforcement can be achieved. There are many factors that affect the design of rehabilitation toys. The industry has not formed a unified design evaluation standard, and the effects of product rehabilitation training are uneven. A method based on the radial basis function (RBF) neural network was proposed in this research to study the rehabilitation design and evaluation of rehabilitation toys for children with autism. Firstly, according to the three demand indicators for the evaluation of rehabilitation training for children with autism, that is, "useful, educational, and entertaining," the analytic network process (ANP) method was chosen as the weighting method for determining each indicator in the overall evaluation. The RBF neural network rehabilitation model for children with autism was designed and evaluated. The maximum error of the model was less than 10%. The evaluation method was objective and reasonable, so as to provide a reference for the more accurate design evaluation, purchase, and development of rehabilitation toys for children with autism.