International Meeting for Autism Research: Effect of Context On Face Exploration in 12-Month-Old Infants Later Diagnosed with ASD

Effect of Context On Face Exploration in 12-Month-Old Infants Later Diagnosed with ASD

Thursday, May 20, 2010
Franklin Hall B Level 4 (Philadelphia Marriott Downtown)
9:00 AM
K. Chawarska , Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
F. Shic , Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
Background: A recent study suggests that 2- and 4-year-old children with ASD show atypical distribution of attention to facial features and that their scanning pattern becomes more abnormal with age (Chawarska & Shic, 2009).  In response to novel static faces children with ASD show a restricted scanning pattern, which appears to hamper their ability to effectively encode facial identity information.  Moreover, older children with ASD show a decline in attention to key facial features compared to younger affected children, which suggests that face processing might become more abnormal with age.  It is not clear, however, when the atypical scanning patterns begin to manifest in ASD.  
Objectives: We examined (1) whether face scanning abnormalities are present in 12-month old infants later diagnosed with ASD; and (2) whether the infants are sensitive to the context in which faces are presented and adjust their scanning strategies accordingly.
Methods: We compared performance on face scanning tasks of 10 infants later diagnosed with ASD with 26 typically developing (TD) infants.  All infants participated in a prospective study of children at high and low genetic risk for ASD.  They were tested at 12 months (M=12.29, SD=.40) and their provisional diagnostic status was ascertained at 24 months.  Infants were presented with three 20s clips: (1) a static image of a neutral face (Static); (2) a video of a person smiling (Affect); (3) a video of a person reciting a nursery rhyme (Speech).  Scanning patterns were recorded with an eye-tracker.
Results: Infants in both groups modulated their attention to eye and mouth regions depending on context, spending more time looking at the eyes in the Static and Affect conditions than in the Speech condition. This pattern was reversed for the mouth region.  No significant differences between groups were found in Static and Affect conditions; however, in the Speech condition, infants later diagnosed with ASD exhibited enhanced attention to the mouth (F (1, 33) = 5.88, p<.021), and marginally suppressed attention to the eyes (F (1, 33) = 3.39, p < .075) compared to typical peers.
Conclusions: Preliminary analysis suggests that 12-month-old infants later diagnosed with ASD show elementary sensitivity to the context in which faces are presented and adjust their scanning strategy accordingly.  That is, they spent more time looking at the eyes in the conditions when faces are either static or dynamic/affective but devoid of speech. However, when viewing face of a speaker, their pattern of scanning becomes exaggerated compared to TD controls and they monitor the mouth more frequently.  Proportional decrease in attention to eyes was also noted but was not statistically significant.  The pattern of results in the Speech condition replicates and extends findings reported by Jones, Carr, & Klin, 2009 in 2-year-olds with ASD, suggesting that excessive focus on the mouth is condition specific.  Factors that might contribute to the enhanced attention to mouth in the speech condition might include increased sensitivity to audiovisual contingencies (Klin, et al., 2009) or employment of a compensatory lip reading strategy in children with difficulties in language acquisition.
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See more of: Autism Symptoms