Case report: Transient symptoms of autism spectrum disorder in a 2-year-old boy.

Though early ASD diagnosis is highly stable, this case report describes a rare situation in which symptoms resolved without intervention over a 4 month period. We do not recommend delaying diagnosis in symptomatic children who meet criteria but when major behavioral changes are reported after diagnosis, reevaluation may be beneficial.

Measuring social-communication difficulties in school-age siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder: Standardized versus naturalistic assessment.

Younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; high-risk siblings) are at elevated risk for developing the broader autism phenotype (BAP), which consists of subclinical features of ASD. We examined conversational skills in a naturalistic context and standardized assessments of pragmatic language and communication skills in high-risk and low-risk school-age children with BAP (n = 22) and ASD (n = 18) outcomes, as well as comparison children without ASD or BAP (n = 135). Children with BAP characteristics exhibited lower conversational skills than comparison children, but did not differ on any of three standardized measures. Only the conversational ratings significantly predicted membership in the BAP versus Comparison group. This suggests that naturalistic tasks are crucial when assessing social-communication difficulties in children with a family history of ASD. LAY SUMMARY: The broader autism phenotype (BAP) consists of subclinical features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and is more common among family members of those with ASD. School-age children with BAP characteristics exhibited lower conversational skills than comparison children, but did not differ on standardized language measures tapping similar abilities. This suggests that naturalistic tasks may be more sensitive to the social-communication difficulties seen in some children with a family history of ASD than the standardized language tests used in most evaluations.

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.

A break in parental interaction does not affect the temporal dependency of infant social engagement, but disrupts non-social engagement.

Infant looking patterns during interaction offer an early window into social and nonsocial engagement. Recent evidence indicates that infant looks exhibit temporal dependency-one look duration predicts the next look duration. It is unknown, however, whether temporal dependency emerges as infants structure their own looking or whether it is influenced by interaction. We examined whether a perturbation of social interaction affected temporal dependency. Using the Face-to-Face/Still-Face procedure, we compared temporal dependency during parental interaction (the Face-to-Face & Reunion episodes) to parental non-responsiveness (the Still-Face episode). Overall, the durations of successive infant looks were predictable; past behavior constrained current behavior. The duration of one look at the parent (Face Look) predicted the duration of the next Face Look. Likewise, the duration of a look at any place that was not the parent's face (Away Look) predicted the duration of the next Away Look. The temporal dependency of Face Looks (social engagement) was unaffected by the Still-Face perturbation, but the temporal dependency of Away Looks (nonsocial engagement) declined during the Still-Face. Infant temporal structuring of engagement during social looking is not dependent on parental interaction while the disruption of interaction affects infants' structuring of their own non-social engagement.

Gaze to faces across interactive contexts in infants at heightened risk for autism.

Infant social-communicative behavior, such as gaze to the face of an interactive partner, is an important early developmental skill. Children with autism spectrum disorder exhibit atypicalities in social-communicative behavior, including gaze and eye contact. Behavioral differences in infancy may serve as early markers of autism spectrum disorder and help identify individuals at highest risk for developing the disorder. Researchers often assess social-communicative behavior in a single interactive context, such as during assessment with an unfamiliar examiner or play with a parent. Understanding whether infant behavior is consistent across such contexts is important for evaluating the validity of experimental paradigms and the generalizability of findings from one interactive context/partner to another. We examined infant gaze to the face of a social partner at 6, 9, and 12 months of age in infants who were later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, as well as low- and high-risk infants without autism spectrum disorder outcomes, across two interactive contexts: structured testing with an unfamiliar examiner and semi-structured play with a parent. By 9 months, infant gaze behavior was significantly associated between the two contexts. By 12 months, infants without autism spectrum disorder outcomes exhibited higher mean rates of gaze to faces during parent-child play than Mullen testing, while the gaze behavior of the autism spectrum disorder group did not differ by context-suggesting that infants developing autism spectrum disorder may be less sensitive to context or interactive partner. Findings support the validity of assessing infant social-communicative behavior during structured laboratory settings and suggest that infant behavior exhibits consistency across settings and interactive partners.

An exploration of common dopaminergic variants and behavior problems in siblings at high risk for autism spectrum disorder.

Younger siblings of children with ASD often exhibit elevated internalizing and externalizing problems. We investigated common dopaminergic variants (DRD4 and DRD2) in relation to behavior problems at 36 months. Genotypes linked to less efficient dopaminergic functioning were associated with higher internalizing problems in high-risk siblings.

Temporal Dependency and the Structure of Early Looking.

Although looking time is used to assess infant perceptual and cognitive processing, little is known about the temporal structure of infant looking. To shed light on this temporal structure, 127 three-month-olds were assessed in an infant-controlled habituation procedure and presented with a pre-recorded display of a woman addressing the infant using infant-directed speech. Previous individual look durations positively predicted subsequent look durations over a six look window, suggesting a temporal dependency between successive infant looks. The previous look duration continued to predict the subsequent look duration after accounting for habituation-linked declines in look duration, and when looks were separated by an inter-trial interval in which no stimulus was displayed. Individual differences in temporal dependency, the strength of associations between consecutive look durations, are distinct from individual differences in mean infant look duration. Nevertheless, infants with stronger temporal dependency had briefer mean look durations, a potential index of stimulus processing. Temporal dependency was evident not only between individual infant looks but between the durations of successive habituation trials (total looking within a trial). Finally, temporal dependency was evident in associations between the last look at the habituation stimulus and the first look at a novel test stimulus. Thus temporal dependency was evident across multiple timescales (individual looks and trials comprised of multiple individual looks) and persisted across conditions including brief periods of no stimulus presentation and changes from a familiar to novel stimulus. Associations between consecutive look durations over multiple timescales and stimuli suggest a temporal structure of infant attention that has been largely ignored in previous work on infant looking.

Dopaminergic variants in siblings at high risk for autism: Associations with initiating joint attention.

Younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; high-risk siblings) exhibit lower levels of initiating joint attention (IJA; sharing an object or experience with a social partner through gaze and/or gesture) than low-risk siblings of children without ASD. However, high-risk siblings also exhibit substantial variability in this domain. The neurotransmitter dopamine is linked to brain areas associated with reward, motivation, and attention, and common dopaminergic variants have been associated with attention difficulties. We examined whether these common dopaminergic variants, DRD4 and DRD2, explain variability in IJA in high-risk (n = 55) and low-risk (n = 38) siblings. IJA was assessed in the first year during a semi-structured interaction with an examiner. DRD4 and DRD2 genotypes were coded according to associated dopaminergic functioning to create a gene score, with higher scores indicating more genotypes associated with less efficient dopaminergic functioning. Higher dopamine gene scores (indicative of less efficient dopaminergic functioning) were associated with lower levels of IJA in the first year for high-risk siblings, while the opposite pattern emerged in low-risk siblings. Findings suggest differential susceptibility-IJA was differentially associated with dopaminergic functioning depending on familial ASD risk. Understanding genes linked to ASD-relevant behaviors in high-risk siblings will aid in early identification of children at greatest risk for difficulties in these behavioral domains, facilitating targeted prevention and intervention. Autism Res 2016, 9: 1142-1150. © 2016 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Thrill of victory or agony of defeat? Perceivers fail to utilize information in facial movements.

Although the distinction between positive and negative facial expressions is assumed to be clear and robust, recent research with intense real-life faces has shown that viewers are unable to reliably differentiate the valence of such expressions (Aviezer, Trope, & Todorov, 2012). Yet, the fact that viewers fail to distinguish these expressions does not in itself testify that the faces are physically identical. In Experiment 1, the muscular activity of victorious and defeated faces was analyzed. Higher numbers of individually coded facial actions--particularly smiling and mouth opening--were more common among winners than losers, indicating an objective difference in facial activity. In Experiment 2, we asked whether supplying participants with valid or invalid information about objective facial activity and valence would alter their ratings. Notwithstanding these manipulations, valence ratings were virtually identical in all groups, and participants failed to differentiate between positive and negative faces. While objective differences between intense positive and negative faces are detectable, human viewers do not utilize these differences in determining valence. These results suggest a surprising dissociation between information present in expressions and information used by perceivers.

Joint attention initiation with and without positive affect: risk group differences and associations with ASD symptoms.

Infants at risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may have difficulty integrating smiles into initiating joint attention (IJA) bids. A specific IJA pattern, anticipatory smiling, may communicate preexisting positive affect when an infant smiles at an object and then turns the smile toward the social partner. We compared the development of anticipatory smiling at 8, 10, and 12 months in infant siblings of children with ASD (high-risk siblings) and without ASD (low-risk siblings). High-risk siblings produced less anticipatory smiling than low-risk siblings, suggesting early differences in communicating preexisting positive affect. While early anticipatory smiling distinguished the risk groups, IJA not accompanied by smiling best predicted later severity of ASD-related behavioral characteristics among high-risk siblings. High-risk infants appear to show lower levels of motivation to share positive affect with others. However, facility with initiating joint attention in the absence of a clear index of positive affective motivation appears to be central to the prediction of ASD symptoms.

Darwin's Duchenne: eye constriction during infant joy and distress.

Darwin proposed that smiles with eye constriction (Duchenne smiles) index strong positive emotion in infants, while cry-faces with eye constriction index strong negative emotion. Research has supported Darwin's proposal with respect to smiling, but there has been little parallel research on cry-faces (open-mouth expressions with lateral lip stretching). To investigate the possibility that eye constriction indexes the affective intensity of positive and negative emotions, we first conducted the Face-to-Face/Still-Face (FFSF) procedure at 6 months. In the FFSF, three minutes of naturalistic infant-parent play interaction (which elicits more smiles than cry-faces) are followed by two minutes in which the parent holds an unresponsive still-face (which elicits more cry-faces than smiles). Consistent with Darwin's proposal, eye constriction was associated with stronger smiling and with stronger cry-faces. In addition, the proportion of smiles with eye constriction was higher during the positive-emotion eliciting play episode than during the still-face. In parallel, the proportion of cry-faces with eye constriction was higher during the negative-emotion eliciting still-face than during play. These results are consonant with the hypothesis that eye constriction indexes the affective intensity of both positive and negative facial configurations. A preponderance of eye constriction during cry-faces was observed in a second elicitor of intense negative emotion, vaccination injections, at both 6 and 12 months of age. The results support the existence of a Duchenne distress expression that parallels the more well-known Duchenne smile. This suggests that eye constriction-the Duchenne marker-has a systematic association with early facial expressions of intense negative and positive emotion.