Social Developmental Disorders Research Articles

Mental and Physical Development of Preschool Children Born After Assisted Reproduction

This empirical study compared the mental (intellectual, personal, emotional, social) and physical development of four-year-old children conceived by assisted reproduction technology (ART) with that of naturally conceived children. The sample consisted of 90 ART children and 130 spontaneously conceived children (control). The research revealed no significant differences in behavior, emotional development, gender roles, intellectual development (visual-motor coordination, logical thinking, vocabulary, conceptual knowledge, speech development, counting and reading skills), physical development, emotional and behavioral eating habits, and dental health. The ART children demonstrated significantly higher symptoms of social developmental disorders and lower levels of categorizing skills, with a low effect size. The article introduces significant relationships across various components of mental development, as well as between mental and physical development of ART children vs. control. The majority of preschool children conceived by ART had normative development, but the study revealed a risk group and problem areas of development, which require monitoring and early correction.

The emergence of a theta social brain network during infancy

Infants’ socio-cognitive ability develops dramatically during the first year of life. From the perspective of ontogeny, the early development of social behavior allows for parent-child attachment, which in turn enhances survival. Thus, it is theorized that the development of social behavior, driven by social brain networks, forms the core of developmental acquisitions during this period. Further, understanding the maturation within the neural networks during social development is crucial to obtain a better grasp of the development of social developmental disorders. Therefore, we performed a longitudinal study in 854 infants measured at around 5 and 10 months to map the development of functional networks in the brain when infants were processing social and non-social videos. Using EEG, we focused on the frequency bands most commonly connected to social behavior: theta and alpha. We found that alpha networks remained relatively stable over the first year of life and showed no selectivity for social versus non-social stimuli, theta networks, showed strong global reconfigurations. The development of the theta networks progressed from a parietal occipital network in early infancy to a frontoparietal network towards the end of the first year of life. This reconfiguration coincided with selectivity for social versus non-social stimuli, with infants approaching the end of their first year of life showing increased synchronicity of theta communication when watching social videos versus non-social videos. Our findings provide strong evidence for the involvement of a frontoparietal theta network in the development of the social brain.

A Susceptible Period of Photic Day-Night Rhythm Loss in Common Marmoset Social Behavior Development.

The prevalence of neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders such as pervasive developmental disorders is rapidly increasing worldwide. Although these developmental disorders are known to be influenced by an individual’s genetic background, the potential biological responses to early life’s environmental exposure to both physical and psychological factors must also be considered. Many studies have acknowledged the influence of shorter time for rest at night and the simultaneous occurrence of various kinds of complications involving developmental disorders. In a prior study, we examined how a common marmoset’s (Callithrix jacchus) psychosocial development was affected when it was reared under constant daylight from birth and then reared individually by humans nursing them under constant light (LL) during their juvenile development stages. The behaviors of these marmosets were compared with those of normal day-night cycle (LD) marmosets using a multivariate analysis based on principal component analysis (PCA). That study found that LL marmosets relatively elicited egg-like calls (Ecall) and side-to-side shakes of the upper body with rapid head rotation through adulthood frequently. Based on the PCA, these behaviors were interpreted as “alert” or “hyperactive” states. However, we did not clarify susceptible periods of the photic rhythm loss experience and the psychological development output. In this study we summarize the following studies in our model animal colonies involving 30 animals (11 female, 19 males) to further explore critical age states of inquiry about each social behavior profiling. We compared social behaviors of three age stages, juvenile, adolescent and young adult equivalent to one another in four LL experience conditions, LL (postnatal day (P) 0 to around 150), Middle (P60–149, 90 days), Late (P150–239, 90 days), and LD (no experience). In the most representative 1st and 2nd principal component scores, the shifting to higher frequency of alert behaviors developed at the adult stage in LL, Middle, then Late in turn. The no LL experience group, LD, generally featured higher frequency of local preference of high position compared to LL experience present groups, in adulthood. This limited model primate study might inspire different developmental age sensitive mechanisms of neuronal network to control socio-emotional functions by utilizing the multivariate visualization method, BOUQUET. This study could potentially contribute to nurturing educational designs for social developmental disorders.

Fundamentals and Limits of the Inclusive Culture and Inclusive Practise

Inclusion is an ideal: Belonging to the educations system is not a question. The children with disabilities are all part of a group, of a class, a school and of a community. This idea is great, but it needs to be grounded. Before describing in concrete terms which possibilities open up inclusive practices, the negative must be taken in account. The negative is intrusive: for the claim - to integrate everyone - can fail at certain moments. The idea of promoting and not selecting ends with a disturbing insight that affects a certain group: children with emotional and social developmental disorders. An interesting but difficult group, if we allow ourselves a few cliche-like exaggerations. A group that will be described in the following. The following article therefore covers a very wide range of objects. First, it aims to recall the foundations of inclusive theory; in this respect, it primarily aims at social-theoretical idealizations for which there is no exact equivalent in reality. First of all, abstract norms and values are at stake, ideals that always receive a resonance in pedagogical reality. But this resonance is not a measurable effect that can be exactly reproduced with the means of empirical social research. On the other hand it is a question of a group of people who may not be able to correspond to the described ideal: Children and adolescents with social and emotional developmental disorders. This group is trivially a factual component of a larger social group. But to what extent their integration and promotion is feasible within an inclusive framework would be questionable. Accordingly, the methodology must remain related to phenomenological perspectives. For it is not just a question of asking who may be a victim of exclusion, who is successfully integrated into a system and who is excluded. Rather, it is about the social-theoretical consequences of an irreversible tension: between a reality in which educational subjects do not correspond to the expectations, in which children are sorted and classified - and a theory that would have to draw conclusions from this situation. The aim of the following considerations would therefore be to start from the perspective of those subjects that we describe as inferior and marginalized, and to what extent observing the preconditions of this group should be a constitutive (and hitherto overlooked) component of the theory of inclusion.

Postural control, motor skills, and health-related quality of life in children with hearing impairment: a systematic review

Children with hearing impairment have balance and motor deficits primarily due to concomitant damage to the vestibular structures. Psycho-intellectual and social developmental disorders, as well as elimination of social activities and participation may diminish health-related quality of life in these children. Despite the documentation, assessment of balance, motor deficits, and health-related quality of life of these children are not included in the educational program, unless obvious neurological or orthopedic disorders are diagnosed. The objective of this review was to systematically analyze the available information in the literatures regarding the postural control, motor skills, and health-related quality of life in children with hearing impairment. Searches of data sources PubMed, MEDLINE, CINHAL, EMBASE, SCOPUS, ISI of web science, Cochrane Library, and AMED database were performed from the earliest to 7 February 2011. Study eligibility criteria included non-interventional studies that addressed postural control, motor skills, and health-related quality of life in children with hearing impairment. For each eligible article, data were extracted using custom-designed forms by a single investigator. Collected data included study demographics, study design, study population, sample size, outcome measures, and results. A total of 11,872 articles were retrieved, and 17 articles were found to be eligible for inclusion. Of the 17 articles included, five articles analyzed health-related quality of life alone, two articles analyzed balance alone, two articles analyzed motor performance alone, two articles analyzed vestibular dysfunction alone, two articles included both vestibular dysfunction and balance, two articles included both motor performance and balance, and two articles investigated vestibular, balance as well as motor impairments. Heterogeneity of the studies prevented us from performing methodological quality assessment and meta-analysis. The results of this review suggest that children with hearing impairment exhibit suboptimal levels of function in postural control, motor skill performance, and health-related quality of life.

Effects of constant daylight exposure during early development on marmoset psychosocial behavior

Due to global industrialization, the light cycle is shifting to longer daytime. Mounting evidence indicates that social developmental disorders may correlate with longer periods of daytime in childhood. However, the exact mechanisms of this link remain unclear. To examine the impact of longer day-time on psychosocial development, we developed a novel non-human primate model, using the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) reared under constant daylight from birth. Marmosets were reared individually by human nursing under constant light (LL) during varying periods in juvenile development, and their behaviors were compared with those of normal day-night cycle (LD) marmosets by multivariate analysis based on principal component analysis (PCA). LL marmosets elicited egg-like calls (e-call) less in juvenile period, and displayed side-to-side shakes of the upper body with rapid head rotation through adulthood frequently. Based on the PCA, these behaviors were interpreted as 'alert' or 'hyperactive' states. Additionally, behavioral development of marmosets reared under constant dark (DD) was markedly different from both LD and LL marmosets, suggesting the fundamental importance of daylight-dependent neuronal and endocrine processes and entrainment by a constant 24-hour light/dark cycle on psychosocial behavior development.

Investigations of face expertise in the social developmental disorders

Patients with social developmental disorders (SDD), also known as autism spectrum disorders, may have impaired recognition of facial identity or facial expressions. Our goal was to determine whether SDDs were characterized by loss of a perceptual mechanism responsible for face expertise, as current theories suggest that such a loss should be selective for upright faces, disproportionately affect the perception of facial configuration, and possibly be more severe in the eye region. We tested a group of 24 adult patients with SDD with an oddity paradigm that required them to detect changes in facial configuration or feature color, in either the eyes or the mouth, in both upright and inverted faces. One group of subjects with SDD with normal famous face recognition had only a mild reduction in accuracy and a normal pattern of inversion effects. A second group of subjects with SDD with impaired famous face recognition had a severe reduction of accuracy. This deficit was not limited to upright faces. It affected the perception of feature configuration and feature color to a similar degree and both eye and mouth changes were discriminated poorly in upright faces. The impaired face recognition that is present in a subset of patients with social developmental disorders is accompanied by impaired face perception, and this impairment is not exclusive to upright faces, facial configuration, or the eye region. The reduced face processing skills in these subjects may be more consistent with recent computational models of face expertise than with classic dual-route hypotheses.

Ethical Issues in Communicating Science

Most of the publicized work on scientific ethics concentrates on establishing professional norms and avoiding misconduct. The successful communication of science is the responsibility of all involved in the process. In one study, the increased incidence of autism and other social developmental disorders in males was investigated by examining individuals with Turner's syndrome (XO females). In the national newspaper this became Genetic X-factor explains why boys will always be boys. The steps by which a study on developmental disorders, published in a highly prestigious journal, was transformed into an article in the science section which 'explained' the socially expected gender-based behavior of genetically normal children are fascinating and, unfortunately far too typical. The scientists wrote an excellent article that has just one sentence at the end that hesitantly suggests that the findings might, with further study, have some relevance to understanding normal behavior. The general interest article in the front of the journal gave a good account of the research, but suggested more strongly that there could be an in-built biological dimorphism in social cognition. This was misrepresented in the press as proof of gender differences that undermines the trend towards sexual equality, and both illustrates cultural bias and provides fodder for feminist critiques of science. The study has been made to appear to be biased in favor of justifying the social structure of society, and yet it was the translation from the scientific study to national news that produced this transformation to biased genetic determinism. It is poor communication of the actual science, coupled with a lack of skepticism on the part of the public, that contributes to such a misapplication of science. Scientists should resist the urge to generalize their results to make them more compelling. The science community should not allow misconstructions of scientific facts to go unchallenged. Journalists, for both the scientific publication and the newspaper, should resist the inclination to embellish the finding with social significance that is not present. For their part, readers must be doubly skeptical of any finding that appears to underwrite any current social hierarchy. We are all responsible for a communication and interpretation of science that is as accurate and socially responsible as possible.

Perception of facial expression and facial identity in subjects with social developmental disorders

It has been hypothesized that the social dysfunction in social developmental disorders (SDDs), such as autism, Asperger disorder, and the socioemotional processing disorder, impairs the acquisition of normal face-processing skills. The authors investigated whether this purported perceptual deficit was generalized to both facial expression and facial identity or whether these different types of facial perception were dissociated in SDDs. They studied 26 adults with a variety of SDD diagnoses, assessing their ability to discriminate famous from anonymous faces, their perception of emotional expression from facial and nonfacial cues, and the relationship between these abilities. They also compared the performance of two defined subgroups of subjects with SDDs on expression analysis: one with normal and one with impaired recognition of facial identity. While perception of facial expression was related to the perception of nonfacial expression, the perception of facial identity was not related to either facial or nonfacial expression. Likewise, subjects with SDDs with impaired facial identity processing perceived facial expression as well as those with normal facial identity processing. The processing of facial identity and that of facial expression are dissociable in social developmental disorders. Deficits in perceiving facial expression may be related to emotional processing more than face processing. Dissociations between the perception of facial identity and facial emotion are consistent with current cognitive models of face processing. The results argue against hypotheses that the social dysfunction in social developmental disorder causes a generalized failure to acquire face-processing skills.

Beyond social awkwardness: Problems with “reading” faces?

Feelings of awkwardness at a party are not limited to the teenage scene. Remember the guy who won’t look at you when he talks but mumbles as he gazes at his shoelace or the more unnerving fellow who gets too close and breathes into your face as he talks? Many people suffer from problems interacting with others. At the extreme, these people may be labeled with autism, Asperger disorder, and socio-emotional processing disorders; see About Social Developmental Disorders on the next page. What makes social interactions so difficult for these people? In a recent study, published in this issue of Neurology , Rebecca Hefter et al.1 suggest that problems with social interactions may be related to problems learning how to interpret faces. One of the ways we judge a person’s emotional state is by “reading” his/her facial expression. During a conversation, “reading” your listener’s expression helps you judge whether he/she understands or is interested in what you are saying. Without this ongoing assessment and modification of what you are saying, a conversation may become awkward, ineffective or worse. Hefter’s group suggests that people with social developmental disorders (SDD) have difficulties identifying faces and interpreting facial expression. To test this idea, they studied 26 adults with a number of different types of SDD. Information was obtained for each person regarding developmental history and emotional adjustment. Special attention was given to their use of eye contact, facial expression and gestures. Each person took a standardized intelligence test. Then, they took a special test to see if they recognized famous people. Pictures of 20 famous and 20 non-famous faces were shown to each subject. The task was to separate the pictures into groups of familiar and unfamiliar faces, and to name the familiar faces, …

Are patients with social developmental disorders prosopagnosic? Perceptual heterogeneity in the Asperger and socio-emotional processing disorders.

It has been hypothesized that social developmental disorders (SDD) like autism, Asperger's disorder and the social-emotional processing disorder may be associated with prosopagnosic-like deficits in face recognition. We studied the ability to recognize famous faces in 24 adults with a variety of SDD diagnoses. We also measured their ability to discriminate changes in internal facial configuration, a perceptual function that is important in face recognition, and their imagery for famous faces, an index of their facial memory stores. We contrasted their performance with both healthy subjects and prosopagnosic patients. We also performed a cluster analysis of the SDD patients. One group of eight SDD subjects performed normally on all tests of face perception and recognition. The other 16 subjects were impaired in recognition, though most were better than prosopagnosic patients. One impaired SDD subgroup had poor perception of facial structure but relatively preserved imagery, resembling prosopagnosic patients with medial occipitotemporal lesions. Another subgroup had better perception than imagery, resembling one prosopagnosic with bilateral anterior temporal lesions. Overall, SDD subgroup membership by face recognition did not correlate with a particular SDD diagnosis or subjective ratings of social impairment. We conclude that the social disturbance in SDD does not invariably lead to impaired face recognition. Abnormal face recognition in some SDD subjects is related to impaired perception of facial structure in a manner suggestive of occipitotemporal dysfunction. Heterogeneity in the perceptual processing of faces may imply pathogenetic heterogeneity, with important implications for genetic and rehabilitative studies of SDD.

Introduction to the Special Series on Social Competence and Developmental Disorders

Introduction to the Special Series on Social Competence and Developmental Disorders