How young children with autism treat objects and people: a longitudinal study of the first year of life through home movies

OBJECTIVE: To figure out features of autism before the age of one and to explore the pathways of early social and nonsocial attention in autism through home movies. METHOD: Home movies of 15 children later diagnosed with autism, are compared with home movies of 13 typical children. The films of the two groups have been mixed and rated by blind observers through a Grid composed of social and nonsocial item and applied to two age ranges: 0-6 months (T1) and 7-12 months (T2). Two MANOVAs, an ANOVA and discriminant analyses were applied. RESULTS: Significant differences between the two groups were found only for the item in the Social area at T1 but not at T2, when groups did not differ in either social or nonsocial areas. At T2 children with autism had significantly higher scores in the nonsocial area while normal children did not show significant differences between areas. Discriminant analyses revealed that social attention can distinguish the two groups at T1 but not at T2. CONCLUSIONS: The fundamental impairment of joint attention in autism could be considered a consequence of the early atypical developmental gap and of a later disconnection between attention to people and objects. Abnormal developmental trajectories for social and nonsocial attention could help us in the future to understand relationships between adaptive capacities and symptoms, and set the stage for appropriate early screening instruments

Young children with Velo-Cardio-Facial syndrome (CATCH-22). Psychological and language phenotypes.

This is the first clinical description of a detailed psychological, speech, and language phenotype of four young children (< 5 years) with Velo-Cardio-Facial syndrome (VCFS) due to a deletion on chromosome 22 (22q11.2). The reported elevated risk of developing schizophrenia or bipolar disorder in adolescence for individuals with this chromosomal deletion led us to examine the psychiatric and cognitive status of young children with VCFS. Our observations suggest a phenotype comprised of a borderline to mildly retarded level of intellectual functioning, a language delay, a general deficit in social initiation, difficulties with attention/concentration, and a perturbed train of thought