Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 75, Issue 3, 1 February 2014, Pages 231-237
Biological Psychiatry

Archival Report
Speech Disturbs Face Scanning in 6-Month-Old Infants Who Develop Autism Spectrum Disorder

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.07.009Get rights and content

Background

From birth, infants show a preference for the faces, gaze, and voices of others. In individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) these biases seem to be disturbed. The source of these disturbances is not well-understood, but recent efforts have shown that the spontaneous deployment of attention to social targets might be atypical as early as 6 months of age. The nature of this atypical behavior and the conditions under which it arises are currently unknown.

Methods

We used eye-tracking to examine the gaze patterns of 6-month-old infants (n = 99) at high risk (n = 57) and low risk (n = 42) for developing ASD as they viewed faces that were: 1) still; 2) moving and expressing positive affect; or 3) speaking. Clinical outcomes were determined through a comprehensive assessment at the age of 3 years. The scanning patterns of infants later diagnosed with ASD were compared with infants without an ASD outcome.

Results

Infants who later developed ASD spent less time looking at the presented scenes in general than other infants. When these infants looked at faces, their looking toward the inner features of faces decreased compared with the other groups only when the presented face was speaking.

Conclusions

Our study suggests that infants later diagnosed with ASD have difficulties regulating attention to complex social scenes. It also suggests that the presence of speech might uniquely disturb the attention of infants who later develop ASD at a critical developmental point when other infants are acquiring language and learning about their social world.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants (n = 122) were enrolled in a prospective study of face processing and comprised both younger siblings of children with ASD (HR; n = 68) and infants who had no family history of ASD in any first- or second-degree relatives (LR; n = 54). In HR infants, the diagnosis of the older sibling was confirmed by clinical best estimate together with the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-G (66) and/or Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (67). In LR infants, family history was ascertained

Looking at the Scene

Analysis of %Scene indicated a group difference (F3,92.0 = 4.16, p = .008) but no condition (p = .656) or group × condition interaction (p = .620). Infants later diagnosed with ASD looked less at the scene as a whole as compared with HR-ATYP (p = .006, Cohen's d = 1.01) and LR-TYP (p = .004, d = 1.19) infants and showed a trend to look less than HR-TYP infants (p = .083, d = .56) (Figure 2A; Figure S1 Row 1 in Supplement 1).

Looking at Inner Features of the Face

Analysis of %Inner showed no main effects of group (p = .533) or

Discussion

The key findings of this study are that 6-month-old infants who later develop ASD show marked reductions in attention toward both static and dynamic faces and, when they do attend to faces, look less at the socially informative inner features. However, although the former deficit does not seem to be condition-specific, diminished attention to the key facial features was found only in response to a face that was speaking. Despite these deficits, infants later diagnosed with ASD show an

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