Abnormal visual attention to simple social stimuli in 4-month-old infants at high risk for Autism

Elisa Di Giorgio,Francesca Simion,Maria Luisa Scattoni,Orsola Rosa-Salva,Elisa Frasnelli,Marco Lunghi,Antonio Calcagnì,Giorgio Vallortigara

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-95418-4

Elisa Di Giorgio, Francesca Simion + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95418-4

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Abstract

Despite an increasing interest in detecting early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), the pathogenesis of the social impairments characterizing ASD is still largely unknown. Atypical visual attention to social stimuli is a potential early marker of the social and communicative deficits of ASD. Some authors hypothesized that such impairments are present from birth, leading to a decline in the subsequent typical functioning of the learning-mechanisms. Others suggested that these early deficits emerge during the transition from subcortically to cortically mediated mechanisms, happening around 2–3 months of age. The present study aimed to provide additional evidence on the origin of the early visual attention disturbance that seems to characterize infants at high risk (HR) for ASD. Four visual preference tasks were used to investigate social attention in 4-month-old HR, compared to low-risk (LR) infants of the same age. Visual attention differences between HR and LR infants emerged only for stimuli depicting a direct eye-gaze, compared to an adverted eye-gaze. Specifically, HR infants showed a significant visual preference for the direct eye-gaze stimulus compared to LR infants, which may indicate a delayed development of the visual preferences normally observed at birth in typically developing infants. No other differences were found between groups. Results are discussed in the light of the hypotheses on the origins of early social visual attention impairments in infants at risk for ASD.

Highlights

Despite an increasing interest in detecting early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), the pathogenesis of the social impairments characterizing ASD is still largely unknown
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are well-known early onset, neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by qualitative impairments in social communication and interaction, and by restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped behaviors, interests and a ctivities[1]
Beta linear models were used to assess whether the dependent variables we considered, the proportion of time fixation and the proportion of number fixations for the non-social stimuli, varied as a function of the variable group (LR and high risk (HR))[42]

Summary

Introduction

Despite an increasing interest in detecting early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), the pathogenesis of the social impairments characterizing ASD is still largely unknown. Prospective longitudinal studies of infants at high-risk (HR) for ASD (i.e., siblings of children with ASD, 21,22,23) in the first year of life have shed some light on this hypothesis They provided mixed evidence of social attentional impairments at this early age[24,25], the majority of those studies suggested the presence, at around 6 months of age, of early signs of diminished and/or altered social attention in HR infants who later develop ASD22,26. In line with the hypothesis that such impairments may be present well before 6 months[16], some studies investigated visual attention for social stimuli in HR infants, starting from b irth[31,32]

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