Neural correlates of face and object recognition in young children with autism spectrum disorder,developmental delay,and typical development

This study utilized electroencephalographic recordings to examine whether young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have impaired face recognition ability. High-density brain event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to photos of the child's mother's face versus an unfamiliar female face and photos of a favorite versus an unfamiliar toy from children with ASD, children with typical development, and children with developmental delay, all 3 to 4 years of age (N = 118). Typically developing children showed ERP amplitude differences in two components, P400 and Nc, to a familiar versus an unfamiliar face, and to a familiar versus an unfamiliar object. In contrast, children with ASD failed to show differences in ERPs to a familiar versus an unfamiliar face, but they did show P400 and Nc amplitude differences to a familiar versus an unfamiliar object. Developmentally delayed children showed significant ERP amplitude differences for the positive slow wave for both faces and objects. These data suggest that autism is associated with face recognition impairment that is manifest early in life.     

Faces Do Not Capture Special Attention in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Change Blindness Study

Two experiments investigated attention of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to faces and objects. In both experiments, children (7- to 15-year-olds) detected the difference between 2 visual scenes. Results in Experiment 1 revealed that typically developing children ( n  = 16) detected the change in faces faster than in objects, whereas children with ASD ( n  = 16) were equally fast in detecting changes in faces and objects. These results were replicated in Experiment 2 ( n  = 16 in children with ASD and 22 in typically developing children), which does not require face recognition skill. Results suggest that children with ASD lack an attentional bias toward others' faces, which could contribute to their atypical social orienting.     

Neurocognitive function and joint attention ability in young children with autism spectrum disorder versus developmental delay

Studies have shown that young children with autism are not impaired on prefrontal tasks relative to what would be expected for their mental age, raising questions about the executive dysfunction hypothesis of autism. These studies did not include ventromedial prefrontal tasks, however. The present study examined whether young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are impaired on ventromedial prefrontal tasks, and whether performance on such tasks is correlated with a core autism symptom, joint attention ability. Seventy-two 3- to 4-year-old children with ASD, 34 3- to 4-year-old developmentally delayed children, and 39 12- to 46-month-old typically developing children, matched on mental age, were administered ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal tasks and joint attention tasks. Children with ASD performed similarly to comparison groups on all executive function tasks, indicating that at this early age, there is no autism-specific pattern of executive dysfunction. Ventromedial, but not dorsolateral, prefrontal task performance was strongly correlated with joint attention ability, however. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is hypothesized to play a role in the development of joint attention and possibly some aspects of the autistic syndrome.     

Can Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders “Hear” a Speaking Face?

This study used eye-tracking methodology to assess audiovisual speech perception in 26 children ranging in age from 5 to 15 years, half with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and half with typical development. Given the characteristic reduction in gaze to the faces of others in children with ASD, it was hypothesized that they would show reduced influence of visual information on heard speech. Responses were compared on a set of auditory, visual, and audiovisual speech perception tasks. Even when fixated on the face of the speaker, children with ASD were less visually influenced than typical development controls. This indicates fundamental differences in the processing of audiovisual speech in children with ASD, which may contribute to their language and communication impairments.     

Motor milestone development in young children with autism spectrum disorders: an exploratory study

This study aimed to determine if a sample of children currently diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) would have shown motor milestone delays before age three as compared to typically developing children. Given delays in motor skills, the study also strived to determine which specific skills might be delayed. Parents of 44 children who had been diagnosed with ASDs answered survey questions related to their child’s early motor milestone development. Survey responses were compared to Bayley’s motor milestone data for typically developing children. Results suggested that all 44 children (age range 82–90 months) with ASDs were delayed on all 26 motor milestones. Specifically, children with autistic disorder (n = 26) were significantly delayed on 11 motor milestones; nine of them delayed before age two. Children with Asperger Syndrome (n = 18) showed significant delay on four milestones; three of them delayed before the age of two.     

An ERP study of emotional face processing in the adult and infant brain

To examine the ontogeny of emotional face processing, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from adults and 7-month-old infants while viewing pictures of fearful, happy, and neutral faces. Face-sensitive ERPs at occipital-temporal scalp regions differentiated between fearful and neutral/happy faces in both adults (N170 was larger for fear) and infants (P400 was larger for fear). Behavioral measures showed no overt attentional bias toward fearful faces in adults, but in infants, the duration of the first fixation was longer for fearful than happy faces. Together, these results suggest that the neural systems underlying the differential processing of fearful and happy/neutral faces are functional early in life, and that affective factors may play an important role in modulating infants' face processing.     

The home literacy environment of school‐aged children with autism spectrum disorders

For typically developing (TD) children, the home literacy environment (HLE) impacts reading competence, yet few studies have explored the HLE of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We collected information about the HLE of children aged 7–13 with ASD and their TD peers via a parental questionnaire and examined whether there were any differences in home literacy practices. Subtle group differences emerged. Children with ASD and concomitant language disorder (autism language disorder [ALD]) were engaged in shared reading and reading discussion more frequently than were TD children and children with ASD and age‐appropriate language skills (autism language normal [ALN]). However, both ALN and ALD children engaged in shared reading for a shorter duration than their TD peers. Across groups, frequency and duration of independent reading were positively associated with reading ability and attitude. Thus, home literacy practices appear to reflect child characteristics, and parents are well placed to facilitate their children's literacy development through encouragement and scaffolding.

Highlights

What is already known about this topic

• The home literacy environment (HLE) impacts the reading development of typically developing children.
• Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have reading difficulties, but little is known about the HLE of children with ASD.

What this paper adds

• We examined the relationship between the HLE and reading for children with ASD.
• Poorer readers with ASD were engaged in shared reading practices more frequently than proficient readers.
• Children with ASD engaged in shared reading practices for a shorter duration than their typically developing peers.

Implications for practice

• Home literacy practices appear to reflect child characteristics.
• Parents are well placed to facilitate their children's literacy development through encouragement and scaffolding.

     

Early social communication development in infants with autism spectrum disorder

Social-communication differences are a robust and defining feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but identifying early points of divergence in infancy has been a challenge. The current study examines social communication in 9- to 12-month-old infants who develop ASD (N = 30; 23% female; 70% white) compared to typically developing (TD) infants (N = 94, 38% female; 88% white). Results demonstrate that infants later diagnosed with ASD were already exhibiting fewer social-communication skills using eye gaze, facial expression, gestures, and sounds at 9 months (effect size: 0.42–0.89). Moreover, three unique patterns of change across distinct social-communication skills were observed within the ASD group. This study documents that observable social-communication differences for infants with ASD are unfolding by 9 months, pointing to a critical window for targeted intervention.     

Neural Correlates of Face Familiarity in Institutionally Reared Children With Distinctive,Atypical Social Behavior

Although the impact of early adverse experience on neural processing of face familiarity has been studied, research has not taken into account disordered child behavior. This work compared the neural processing of familiar versus strangers' faces in 47 institutionalized children with a mean age of 54 months to determine the effects of (a) the presence versus absence of atypical social behavior and (b) inhibited versus indiscriminant atypical behavior. Results revealed a pattern of cortical hypoactivation in institutionalized children manifesting atypical social behavior and that inhibited children displayed larger neural response to a caregiver's face than to the stranger's, while indiscriminant children did not discriminate between stimuli. These findings suggest that neural correlates of face familiarity are associated with social functioning in institutionalized children.     

Prosodic awareness is related to reading ability in children with autism spectrum disorders

Prosodic awareness has been linked with reading accuracy in typically developing children. Although children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have difficulty processing prosody and often have trouble learning to read, no previous study has looked at the link between explicit prosodic awareness and reading in ASD. In the current study, 29 early readers with ASD (5–11 years) completed word and nonword reading accuracy tasks and two measures of prosodic awareness. Tasks relating to phonological awareness, oral language, vocabulary, letter knowledge and nonverbal intelligence were also administered. A key finding was that there was a relationship between prosodic awareness and both word and nonword reading accuracy.     

Early Numerical Competencies in 5- and 6-Year-Old Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Research Findings: To date, studies comparing the mathematical abilities of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing children are scarce, and results remain inconclusive. In general, studies on this topic focus on mathematical abilities learned from elementary school onward, with little attention for possible precursors at younger ages. The current exploratory study focused on the important developmental period of preschool age, investigating 5 early numerical competencies in 30 high-functioning children with ASD and 30 age-matched control children: verbal subitizing, counting, magnitude comparison, estimation, and arithmetic operations. Children were examined at 5 or 6 years of age, attending the 3rd and final year of preschool. Overall, rather similar early number processing was found in children with and without ASD, although marginally significant results indicated a weaker performance of children with ASD on verbal subitizing and conceptual counting. Practice or Policy: Given the pervasiveness and impact of ASD on other domains of functioning, it is important to know that no general deficits in early numerical competencies were found in this study. However, some downward trends in mathematics performance were identified in children with ASD, which can serve as the basis for additional research in this field.     

Neural Processing of Eye Gaze and Threat‐Related Emotional Facial Expressions in Infancy

Combined with emotional expressions, eye gaze can provide essential information to indicate threat in the environment. The current study assessed the effects of eye gaze direction on infants’ neural processing of fearful and angry faces. Event‐related potentials were recorded from thirteen 7‐month‐old infants. Two face‐sensitive posterior components, the N290 and P400, as well as a frontocentral negative component (Nc), indicating attentional arousal, were sensitive to eye gaze direction and emotion. A larger Nc was observed for angry faces with direct compared to averted eye gaze. Fearful faces elicited a larger N290 than angry faces, whereas angry faces elicited a more prominent P400 regardless of eye gaze direction. The findings are discussed in terms of early social cognitive and neural development.     

Individual differences in lexical processing at 18 months predict vocabulary growth in typically developing and late-talking toddlers

Using online measures of familiar word recognition in the looking-while-listening procedure, this prospective longitudinal study revealed robust links between processing efficiency and vocabulary growth from 18 to 30 months in children classified as typically developing (n = 46) and as "late talkers" (n = 36) at 18 months. Those late talkers who were more efficient in word recognition at 18 months were also more likely to "bloom," showing more accelerated vocabulary growth over the following year, compared with late talkers less efficient in early speech processing. Such findings support the emerging view that early differences in processing efficiency evident in infancy have cascading consequences for later learning and may be continuous with individual differences in language proficiency observed in older children and adults.     

Does Gaze Direction Modulate Facial Expression Processing in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Two experiments investigated whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) integrate relevant communicative signals, such as gaze direction, when decoding a facial expression. In Experiment 1, typically developing children (9–14 years old; n  = 14) were faster at detecting a facial expression accompanying a gaze direction with a congruent motivational tendency (i.e., an avoidant facial expression with averted eye gaze) than those with an incongruent motivational tendency. Children with ASD (9–14 years old; n  = 14) were not affected by the gaze direction of facial stimuli. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, which presented only the eye region of the face to typically developing children ( n  = 10) and children with ASD ( n  = 10). These results demonstrated that children with ASD do not encode and/or integrate multiple communicative signals based on their affective or motivational tendency.     

A comparison of parent and professional perceptions of children with autism spectrum disorder in Portugal

Improving early intervention in Portugal for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) requires parents and professionals to collaborate in assessing and planning intervention programmes. This article analyses parental and professional assessments of children with ASD, in the dimensions of social communication, repetitive behaviours and restricted interests, and sensory processing. The study presents contrasting perspectives from professionals and parents from a range of socio‐academic backgrounds. The sample consists of 136 Portuguese children (aged three to six years old) with ASD and involves children, parents and professionals from across the country. All children, at the time, were in preschool and receiving early special education intervention. Parents and professionals used the Assessment Scale for Children with ASD to complete the assessments. The results show that parents rate children's development and learning more positively compared to professionals; and that this difference is more significant in the field of social communication. Further, parents with higher academic qualifications showed statistically significant differences in comparison with professionals in the social communication dimension. These findings are discussed in relation to the literature and some suggestions are made regarding certain practices related to intervention in early childhood.     

Atypical predictive processing during visual statistical learning in children with developmental dyslexia: an event-related potential study

Previous research suggests that individuals with developmental dyslexia perform below typical readers on non-linguistic cognitive tasks involving the learning and encoding of statistical-sequential patterns. However, the neural mechanisms underlying such a deficit have not been well examined. The aim of the present study was to investigate the event-related potential (ERP) correlates of sequence processing in a sample of children diagnosed with dyslexia using a non-linguistic visual statistical learning paradigm. Whereas the response time data suggested that both typical and atypical readers learned the statistical patterns embedded in the task, the ERP data suggested otherwise. Specifically, ERPs of the typically developing children (n?=?12) showed a P300-like response indicative of learning, whereas the children diagnosed with a reading disorder (n?=?8) showed no such ERP effects. These results may be due to intact implicit motor learning in the children with dyslexia but delayed attention-dependent predictive processing. These findings are consistent with other evidence suggesting that differences in statistical learning ability might underlie some of the reading deficits observed in developmental dyslexia.     

Declining Gaze to Faces in Infants Developing Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence From Two Independent Cohorts

Two independent cohorts (N = 155, N = 126) of infants at high and low risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were followed prospectively between 6 and 36 months of age, when n = 46 were diagnosed with ASD. Gaze to adult faces was coded—during a developmental assessment (Cohort 1) or a play interaction (Cohort 2). Across both cohorts, most children developing ASD showed sharp declines in gaze to faces over time, relative to children without ASD. These findings suggest that declining developmental trajectories may be more common than previously recognized by retrospective methods. Trajectory-based screening methods could potentially identify children in the early stages of symptom onset and allow for early intervention before the full disorder has developed.     

Dyslexic,delayed, precocious or just normal? Word reading skills of children with autism spectrum disorders

Word reading skills and reading‐related language and cognitive correlates were examined in Swedish 10–15‐year‐olds with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The full group with ASD did not differ statistically from an age‐matched comparison group in word reading, but a poor‐readers subgroup was identified who displayed severe difficulties. Normal readers with ASD did not differ from the comparison group in nonverbal ability, phonological processing, rapid naming or receptive vocabulary. The poor subgroup performed, however, below on all measures except nonverbal ability. When poor readers with ASD were matched for reading level with younger controls, no difference was found on any reading‐related skill. No significant correlation was furthermore found between autistic symptomatology and word reading within the ASD group. It is concluded that the pattern of individual differences in word reading among children with ASD conforms well to that seen in children without ASD of normal or delayed reading abilities.     

Conflict Resolution Patterns of Preschool Children With and Without Developmental Delays in Heterogeneous Playgroups

The conflict resolution patterns of preschool-age mildly developmentally delayed children were compared to those of older and younger groups of typically developing children matched on the basis of chronological age or developmental level. Children participated in short-term heterogeneous playgroups consisting of representatives from all three developmental status groups. Naturally occurring conflicts with peers in the form of extended directive episodes were assessed in terms of their frequency, purpose, strategies, and the way conflicts were resolved. Results revealed that mildly delayed children exhibit a more negative and less adaptive interaction style, even in comparison to typically developing children similar in developmental level. Special problems were apparent when younger typically developing and mildly delayed children engaged in conflict episodes, whereas typically developing older children were able to adjust and interact appropriately irrespective of their companions' developmental status. In addition, typically developing older children elicited a pattern in which other children were less demanding and negative, but more responsive, positive, and adaptive. The implications of developmental differences between younger and older typically developing children and the unique problems in conflict situations were discussed.     

Conflict Resolution Patterns of Preschool Children With and Without Developmental Delays in Heterogeneous Playgroups

The conflict resolution patterns of preschool-age mildly developmentally delayed children were compared to those of older and younger groups of typically developing children matched on the basis of chronological age or developmental level. Children participated in short-term heterogeneous playgroups consisting of representatives from all three developmental status groups. Naturally occurring conflicts with peers in the form of extended directive episodes were assessed in terms of their frequency, purpose, strategies, and the way conflicts were resolved. Results revealed that mildly delayed children exhibit a more negative and less adaptive interaction style, even in comparison to typically developing children similar in developmental level. Special problems were apparent when younger typically developing and mildly delayed children engaged in conflict episodes, whereas typically developing older children were able to adjust and interact appropriately irrespective of their companions' developmental status. In addition, typically developing older children elicited a pattern in which other children were less demanding and negative, but more responsive, positive, and adaptive. The implications of developmental differences between younger and older typically developing children and the unique problems in conflict situations were discussed.