Ready, Set, Go! Low Anticipatory Response during a Dyadic Task in Infants at High Familial Risk for Autism.

Rebecca J Landa,Joshua L Haworth,Mary Beth Nebel

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00721

Abstract

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate a host of motor impairments that may share a common developmental basis with ASD core symptoms. School-age children with ASD exhibit particular difficulty with hand-eye coordination and appear to be less sensitive to visual feedback during motor learning. Sensorimotor deficits are observable as early as 6 months of age in children who later develop ASD; yet the interplay of early motor, visual and social skill development in ASD is not well understood. Integration of visual input with motor output is vital for the formation of internal models of action. Such integration is necessary not only to master a wide range of motor skills, but also to imitate and interpret the actions of others. Thus, closer examination of the early development of visual-motor deficits is of critical importance to ASD. In the present study of infants at high risk (HR) and low risk (LR) for ASD, we examined visual-motor coupling, or action anticipation, during a dynamic, interactive ball-rolling activity. We hypothesized that, compared to LR infants, HR infants would display decreased anticipatory response (perception-guided predictive action) to the approaching ball. We also examined visual attention before and during ball rolling to determine whether attention engagement contributed to differences in anticipation. Results showed that LR and HR infants demonstrated context appropriate looking behavior, both before and during the ball’s trajectory toward them. However, HR infants were less likely to exhibit context appropriate anticipatory motor response to the approaching ball (moving their arm/hand to intercept the ball) than LR infants. This finding did not appear to be driven by differences in motor skill between risk groups at 6 months of age and was extended to show an atypical predictive relationship between anticipatory behavior at 6 months and preference for looking at faces compared to objects at age 14 months in the HR group.

Highlights

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are defined by social communication impairment along with repetitive and restricted patterns of behavior and interests (RRBI) (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013)
To explore whether high risk (HR) and low risk (LR) infants could be distinguished based on their anticipatory action response during the ball-rolling activity, we constructed a logistic regression model, which included a number of covariates to account for potentially confounding sources of variability between familial risk groups
HR infants were slightly older than LR infants at the time of the targeted age 6-month examination, and a 1-month increase in age at the time of examination was associated with decreased odds of belonging to the LR group by a factor of 0.40 (p = 0.076)

Summary

Introduction

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are defined by social communication impairment along with repetitive and restricted patterns of behavior and interests (RRBI) (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). Children with ASD show a bias against visual feedback from the external world in favor of proprioceptive feedback from their own bodies (Haswell et al, 2009) This sensory bias has been replicated several times, appears to be specific to ASD (Izawa et al, 2012) and is a robust predictor of motor, imitation and social skill deficits (Haswell et al, 2009; Izawa et al, 2012; Marko et al, 2015). Recent neuroimaging evidence suggests that altered connectivity, within and between visual and motor networks, may contribute to motor and social impairments in children with ASD (Fishman et al, 2014; Nebel et al, 2014, 2016)

Objectives

Results

Conclusion