Abstract
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.
Highlights
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compose an early-onset neurodevelopmental syndrome primarily characterized by impairments in social perception, cognition and communication[1]
This hypothesis was recently put into question by results from a recent study, which we will discuss in greater detail later, where infants as young as 2 months old demonstrated normative levels of visual orienting to a social stimulus
Early measures of eye-looking are reported at normative levels in 2-month-old infants later diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), and only between 2 and 6 months of age the difference in looking at the eyes of others emerges, with typically-developing infants showing an increase in looking at the eyes of others during this period, whereas infants later diagnosed with ASD show a decrease in looking at the eyes of others
Summary
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compose an early-onset neurodevelopmental syndrome primarily characterized by impairments in social perception, cognition and communication[1]. These mechanisms putatively bias newborns to orient to relevant social visual stimuli and simultaneously guide the specialization of cortical circuits devoted to detect and process social stimuli[6,7] This hypothesis was recently put into question by results from a recent study, which we will discuss in greater detail later, where infants as young as 2 months old (who were later diagnosed with ASD8) demonstrated normative levels of visual orienting to a social stimulus (i.e., to the area of the eyes within a face). Data from newborns are needed to test the inborn social orienting mechanisms hypothesis: only with this age group can we directly investigate the activity of this mechanism without the interference of previous visual experience and other later-maturing mechanisms
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