Difference in Visual Social Predispositions Between Newborns at Low- and High-risk for Autism

Some key behavioural traits of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have been hypothesized to be due to impairments in the early activation of subcortical orienting mechanisms, which in typical development bias newborns to orient to relevant social visual stimuli. A challenge to testing this hypothesis is that autism is usually not diagnosed until a child is at least 3 years old. Here, we circumvented this difficulty by studying for the very first time, the predispositions to pay attention to social stimuli in newborns with a high familial risk of autism. Results showed that visual preferences to social stimuli strikingly differed between high-risk and low-risk newborns. Significant predictors for high-risk newborns were obtained and an accurate biomarker was identified. The results revealed early behavioural characteristics of newborns with familial risk for ASD, allowing for a prospective approach to the emergence of autism in early infancy.

[1]  Sarah Shultz,et al.  Social visual engagement in infants and toddlers with autism: Early developmental transitions and a model of pathogenesis , 2015, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.

[2]  Giorgio Vallortigara,et al.  Gravity bias in the interpretation of biological motion by inexperienced chicks , 2006, Current Biology.

[3]  G. Vallortigara,et al.  Roots of a social brain: Developmental models of emerging animacy-detection mechanisms , 2015, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[4]  Giorgio Vallortigara,et al.  Visually Inexperienced Chicks Exhibit Spontaneous Preference for Biological Motion Patterns , 2005, PLoS biology.

[5]  Lara Bardi,et al.  Biological motion preference in humans at birth: role of dynamic and configural properties. , 2011, Developmental science.

[6]  Lara Bardi,et al.  The processing of social stimuli in early infancy: from faces to biological motion perception. , 2011, Progress in brain research.

[7]  Mark H. Johnson.  Subcortical face processing , 2005, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[8]  Jennifer C. Sarrett,et al.  Commentary: Attention to Eyes Is Present but in Decline in 2–6-Month-Old Infants Later Diagnosed with Autism , 2015, Front. Public Health.

[9]  Mark H Johnson,et al.  Biological Motion: A Perceptual Life Detector? , 2006, Current Biology.

[10]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  The Evolution of Social Orienting: Evidence from Chicks (Gallus gallus) and Human Newborns , 2011, PloS one.

[11]  Mark H. Johnson.  Autism: Demise of the Innate Social Orienting Hypothesis , 2014, Current Biology.

[12]  G. Dawson,et al.  Understanding the Nature of Face Processing Impairment in Autism: Insights From Behavioral and Electrophysiological Studies , 2005, Developmental neuropsychology.

[13]  S. Rogers,et al.  What are infant siblings teaching us about autism in infancy? , 2009, Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research.

[14]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews the Two-process Theory of Face Processing: Modifications Based on Two Decades of Data from Infants and Adults , 2022 .

[15]  O. Pascalis,et al.  Is the face-perception system human-specific at birth? , 2012, Developmental psychology.

[16]  F. Simion,et al.  A predisposition for biological motion in the newborn baby , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[17]  F. Volkmar.  Understanding the social brain in autism. , 2011, Developmental psychobiology.

[18]  Leslie B. Cohen,et al.  Attention-getting and attention-holding processes of infant visual preferences. , 1972, Child development.

[19]  L. Regolin,et al.  Faces are special for newly hatched chicks: evidence for inborn domain-specific mechanisms underlying spontaneous preferences for face-like stimuli. , 2009, Developmental science.

[20]  Jessica Brian,et al.  A Prospective Case Series of High-risk Infants who Developed Autism , 2007, Journal of autism and developmental disorders.

[21]  G. Dawson,et al.  Social attention: a possible early indicator of efficacy in autism clinical trials , 2012, Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

[22]  Nikolaus F. Troje,et al.  Perception of biological motion in autism spectrum disorders , 2008, Neuropsychologia.

[23]  S. Bryson,et al.  Recurrence Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Baby Siblings Research Consortium Study , 2011, Pediatrics.

[24]  Mark H Johnson,et al.  Rapid Orienting toward Face-like Stimuli with Gaze-Relevant Contrast Information , 2009, Perception.

[25]  S. Ozonoff,et al.  The Very Early Autism Phenotype , 2007 .

[26]  Punit Shah,et al.  Robust orienting to protofacial stimuli in autism , 2013, Current Biology.

[27]  Tony Charman,et al.  The development of face orienting mechanisms in infants at-risk for autism , 2013, Behavioural Brain Research.

[28]  Tony Charman,et al.  Visual orienting in the early broader autism phenotype: disengagement and facilitation. , 2009, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[29]  C. Umilta,et al.  Face preference at birth. , 1996, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[30]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Eye contact detection in humans from birth , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[31]  S. Baron-Cohen.  How to build a baby that can read minds: Cognitive mechanisms in mindreading. , 1994 .

[32]  Gary Longton,et al.  Estimation and Comparison of Receiver Operating Characteristic Curves , 2009, The Stata journal.

[33]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  CONSPEC and CONLERN: a two-process theory of infant face recognition. , 1991, Psychological review.