Infant Neural Sensitivity to Dynamic Eye Gaze relates to quality of parent–infant interaction at 7-months in infants at risk for Autism

Links between brain function measures and quality of parent–child interactions within the early developmental period have been investigated in typical and atypical development. We examined such links in a group of 104 infants with and without a family history for autism in the first year of life. Our findings suggest robust associations between event related potential responses to eye gaze and observed parent–infant interaction measures. In both groups, infants with more positive affect exhibit stronger differentiation to gaze stimuli. This association was observed with the earlier P100 waveform component in the control group but with the later P400 component in infants at-risk. These exploratory findings are critical in paving the way for a better understanding of how infant laboratory measures may relate to overt behavior and how both can be combined in the context of predicting risk or clinical diagnosis in toddlerhood

Covariant Balance Laws in Continua with Microstructure

The purpose of this paper is to extend the Green-Naghdi-Rivlin balance of energy method to continua with microstructure. The key idea is to replace the group of Galilean transformations with the group of diffeomorphisms of the ambient space. A key advantage is that one obtains in a natural way all the needed balance laws on both the macro and micro levels along with two Doyle-Erickson formulas

Acceptability of 12 fortified balanced energy protein supplements : insights from Burkina Faso

Poor maternal nutrition contributes to poor birth outcomes, including low birth weight and small for gestational age births. Fortified balanced energy protein (BEP) supplements may be beneficial, although evidence is limited. This mixed method study, conducted among pregnant women in Burkina Faso, is part of a larger clinical trial that seeks to understand the impact of fortified BEP supplements on pregnancy outcomes and child growth. The formative research reported here, a single‐meal rapid assessment of 12 product formulations, sought to understand product preferences for provision of BEP supplements and contextual factors that might affect product acceptability and use. Results indicate a preference for products perceived as sweet rather than salty/savoury and for products perceived as familiar, as well as a sensitivity to product odours. Women expressed a willingness and intention to use the products even if they did not like them, because of the health benefits for their babies. Data also indicate that household food sharing practices may impact supplement use, although most women denied any intention to share the products. Sharing behaviour should therefore be monitored, and strategies to avoid sharing should be developed during the succeeding parts of the research

Infant regulatory function acts as a protective factor for later traits of autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder but not callous unemotional traits

Abstract: Background: Reduced executive functions (EF) are commonly associated with developmental conditions (e.g., autism spectrum disorder, ASD; attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD), although EF seems to be typical in children with callous unemotional (CU) traits. Regulatory function (RF) is a proposed infant precursor that maps on onto factors driving later EF. Here, we first test whether RF is specifically and negatively associated with ASD and ADHD traits, but not CU traits. Second, we test whether RF can act as a protective factor, by moderating the association between infant markers and subsequent ASD and ADHD traits. Methods: Participants were 79 infants at high (N = 42) and low (N = 37) familial risk for ASD. Data come from the 14-month infant visit (Autism Observational Scale for Infants; AOSI; activity level and RF from the Infant Behavior Questionnaire; IBQ) and the 7-year visit (ASD traits: Social Responsiveness Scale, SRS; ADHD traits: Conners 3, CU traits: Inventory of Callous Unemotional Traits). Results: Infant RF was negatively associated with later traits of ASD (B = − 0.5, p = 0.01) and ADHD inattention (B = − 0.24, p = 0.02) but not hyperactivity (B = − 0.25, p = 0.10) or CU traits (B = 0.02, p = 0.86). RF moderated the association between infant AOSI score and ASD traits, with a significant effect in those with low RF (B = 0.10, p = 0.006), not high RF (B = 0.01, p = 0.78). Similarly, for ADHD, infant activity level was associated with later ADHD inattention in those with low (B = 0.17, p = 0.04) but not high RF (B = 0.07, p = 0.48). For ADHD hyperactivity symptoms, activity level was predictive at both high and low levels of RF. Conclusions: Strong RF may allow children to compensate for other atypicalities, thus attenuating the association between infant markers and later disorder traits. Whilst infant RF was associated with both ASD and ADHD inattention traits, there was no association with ADHD hyperactivity or CU traits. This suggests that any protective effect may not be universal and emphasises the need for a better understanding of the underlying moderating mechanisms

Neural and behavioural indices of face processing in siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD): A longitudinal study from infancy to mid-childhood.

Impaired face processing is proposed to play a key role in the early development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and to be an endophenotypic trait which indexes genetic risk for the disorder. However, no published work has examined the development of face processing abilities from infancy into the school-age years and how they relate to ASD symptoms in individuals with or at high-risk for ASD. In this novel study we investigated neural and behavioural measures of face processing at age 7 months and again in mid-childhood (age 7 years) as well as social-communication and sensory symptoms in siblings at high (n = 42) and low (n = 35) familial risk for ASD. In mid-childhood, high-risk siblings showed atypical P1 and N170 event-related potential correlates of face processing and, for high-risk boys only, poorer face and object recognition ability compared to low-risk siblings. These neural and behavioural atypicalities were associated with each other and with higher social-communication and sensory symptoms in mid-childhood. Additionally, more atypical neural correlates of object (but not face) processing in infancy were associated with less right-lateralised (more atypical) N170 amplitudes and greater social-communication problems in mid-childhood. The implications for models of face processing in ASD are discussed

Early social experience affects the development of eye gaze processing

Eye gaze is a key channel of non-verbal communication in humans [1-3]. Eye contact with others is present from birth [4], and eye gaze processing is crucial for social learning and adult-infant communication [5-7]. However, little is known about the effect of selectively different experience of eye contact and gaze communication on early social and communicative development. To directly address this question, 14 sighted infants of blind parents (SIBP) were assessed longitudinally at 6-10 and 12-16 months. Face scanning [8] and gaze following [7, 9] were assessed using eye tracking. In addition, naturalistic observations were made when the infants were interacting with their blind parent and with an unfamiliar sighted adult. Established measures of emergent autistic-like behaviours [10] and standardized tests of cognitive, motor and linguistic development [11] were also collected. These data were then compared with those obtained from a group of infants of sighted parents. Despite showing typical social skills development overall, infants of blind parents allocated less attention to adult eye movements and gaze direction, an effect which increased between 6-10 and 12-16 months of age. The results suggest that infants adjust their use of adult's eye gaze depending on gaze communication experience from early in life. The results highlight that human functional brain development shows selective experience-dependent plasticity adaptive to the individual's specific social environment

Enhanced visual search in infancy predicts emerging autism symptoms

In addition to core symptoms, i.e., social interaction and communication difficulties and restricted and repetitive behaviours, autism is also characterized by aspects of superior perception [1]. One well-replicated finding is that of superior performance in visual search tasks, in which participants have to indicate the presence of an odd-one-out element amongst a number of foils [2,3,4,5]. Whether these aspects of superior perception contribute to the emergence of core autism symptoms remains debated [6,4]. Perceptual and social interaction skills could reflect co-expressed but biologically independent pathologies, as suggested by a “fractionable” phenotype model of autism [7]. A developmental test of this hypothesis is now made possible by longitudinal cohorts of infants at high risk, such as of younger siblings of children with ASD. Around 20% of younger siblings are diagnosed with autism themselves [8], and up to another 30% manifest elevated levels of autism symptoms [9]. We used eye-tracking to measure spontaneous orienting to letter targets (O, S, V and +) presented amongst distractors (the letter X, Figure 1). At 9 and 15 months, emerging autism symptoms were assessed using the Autism Observation Scale for Infants (AOSI; 10) and at 2 years of age using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS; 11). Enhanced visual search performance at 9-month predicted a higher level of autism symptoms at 15 months and at 2 years. Infant perceptual atypicalities are thus intrinsically linked to the emerging autism phenotype

Crafting Critical Heritage Discourses into Interactive Exhibition Design

This paper argues how a more reflective design practice that embraces critical discourses can transform interactive exhibition design and therefore the museum visiting experience. Four framing arguments underpin our exhibition design making: the value of materiality, visiting as an aesthetic experience, challenging the authorized voice, and heritage as a process. These arguments were embodied through design, art and craft practice into one interactive exhibition at a house museum. We draw from our design process discussing the implications that adopting an approach informed by critical heritage debates has on exhibition design and suggest three sensitizing concepts (polyvocal narratives, dialogical interaction, interweaving time and space) bridging the practice of interactive exhibition design and critical heritage theory

Behavioural markers for autism in infancy: scores on the Autism Observational Scale for infants in a prospective study of at-risk siblings

We investigated early behavioural markers of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using the Autism Observational Scale for Infants (AOSI) in a prospective familial high-risk (HR) sample of infant siblings (N = 54) and low-risk (LR) controls (N = 50). The AOSI was completed at 7 and 14 month infant visits and children were seen again at age 24 and 36 months. Diagnostic outcome of ASD (HR-ASD) versus no ASD (HR-No ASD) was determined for the HR sample at the latter timepoint. The HR group scored higher than the LR group at 7 months and marginally but non-significantly higher than the LR group at 14 months, although these differences did not remain when verbal and nonverbal developmental level were covaried. The HR-ASD outcome group had higher AOSI scores than the LR group at 14 months but not 7 months, even when developmental level was taken into account. The HR-No ASD outcome group had scores intermediate between the HR-ASD and LR groups. At both timepoints a few individual items were higher in the HR-ASD and HR-No ASD outcome groups compared to the LR group and these included both social (e.g. orienting to name) and non-social (e.g. visual tracking) behaviours. AOSI scores at 14 months but not at 7 months were moderately correlated with later scores on the autism diagnostic observation schedule (ADOS) suggesting continuity of autistic-like behavioural atypicality but only from the second and not first year of life. The scores of HR siblings who did not go on to have ASD were intermediate between the HR-ASD outcome and LR groups, consistent with the notion of a broader autism phenotype

Adaptive Behaviour and Cognitive Skills: Stability and Change from 7 Months to 7 Years in Siblings at High Familial Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Cognitive and adaptive behaviour abilities early in life provide important clinical prognostic information. We examined stability of such skills in children at high familial risk for ASD who either met diagnostic criteria for ASD at age 7 years (HR-ASD, n = 15) or did not (HR-non-ASD, n = 24) and low-risk control children (LR, n = 37), prospectively studied from infancy. For both HR groups, cognitive skills were consistently lower across time than those of LR children. HR-ASD children showed increasing difficulties in adaptive behaviour over time compared to LR children, while the HR-non-ASD children showed no such difficulties. This pattern of change may inform our understanding of developmental profiles of HR siblings beyond core ASD symptoms