Abstract
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show atypical processing of facial expressions. Research with autistic toddlers suggests that abnormalities in processing of spatial frequencies (SFs) contribute to such differences. The current event-related-potential (ERP) study investigated differences between 10-month-old infants with high- and low-likelihood for ASD in SF processing and in discrimination of fearful and neutral faces, filtered to contain specific SF. Results indicate no group differences in general processing of higher (HSF, detailed) and lower-SF (LSF, global) information. However, unlike low-likelihood infants, high-likelihood infants do not discriminate between facial expressions when either the LSF or HSF information is available. Combined with previous findings in toddlers, the current results indicate a developmental delay in efficient processing of facial expressions in ASD.
Highlights
Difficulties in social communication are a prominent and defining characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD; American Psychiatric Association 2013)
We examined whether 10-month-old infants with a higher familial likelihood for an ASD diagnosis (HL) already differ from infants with lower familial likelihood for an ASD diagnosis (LL) in (i) the general visual processing of HSF and LSF information, and (ii) in processing facial expressions when they selectively contain HSF or LSF information
We analysed group differences in spatial frequencies (SFs) processing for the mean amplitude of each component of interest (i.e. P100, N290, P400) in response to all faces regardless of the emotional content. The results of these analyses revealed no substantial difference between HL and LL infants in SF processing
Summary
Difficulties in social communication are a prominent and defining characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD; American Psychiatric Association 2013). Note that no group differences were found for the later face-sensitive N170, which suggests that atypicalities in the use of SF to discriminate facial expressions appear at earlier phases of visual processing (Vlamings et al 2010) It is unknown whether infants with a higher likelihood for an ASD diagnosis differ from infants with a lower likelihood in the use of spatial frequencies when processing facial expressions. In the current study we aim to understand whether infants with high-likelihood (HL) and low-likelihood (LL) of developing ASD differ in (i) the general visual processing of HSF and LSF information; (ii) the processing of facial expressions when they selectively contain HSF or LSF information To this end, we recorded cortical activity from 10-month-old HL and LL infants while they passively watched fearful and neutral faces, filtered to contain only HSF or LSF information. Based on previous results in toddlers with ASD and toddlers in the control group (van den Boomen et al 2015; Vlamings et al 2010), we hypothesize the HL group will show an atypical pattern of HSF versus LSF processing compared to the LL group regardless of the expression displayed, as indexed by the P100, N290, and P400 components
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