Evaluating the role of social attention in the causal path to Autism Spectrum Disorder
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Abstract
This thesis evaluated the evidence for the hypothesis that early disruptions in social attention are
involved in the causal pathway to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The sample included infants
at high and low familial risk for neurodevelopmental disorders participating in a prospective
longitudinal study, and their family members. Five studies were conducted to test whether social
attention atypicalities precede the onset of behavioural symptoms and whether they are related
to familial, genetic and epigenetic burden for ASD. Chapter 2 examined neural correlates of attention measured with multi-channel electroencephalography
in 8-month-old infants attending to faces and non-social stimuli, in relation to
outcomes at age 3. Chapter 3 used structural equation modelling to investigate whether
disruptions in neural response have cascading effects on learning from the environment via
looking behaviour. Next, to further understand whether disruptions in social attention lie
between genetic risk and ASD phenotype, Chapter 4 examined the association between ability
to detect eye-gaze direction in a familial sample, severity of ASD symptoms and polygenic risk
for ASD. Chapter 5 explored these patterns earlier in development, looking at the relationship
between social attention at 14 months of age and familial burden, polygenic risk and parentreport
traits of ASD and ADHD. Finally, Chapter 6, leveraging DNA methylation data, explored
whether epigenetic signals were associated with early neural and behavioural correlates of social
attention as well as developmental change leading to atypical outcome. Taken together, this work examined in depth the multifaceted nature of social attention, pointing
to neural and behavioural atypicalities at critical time points as promising targets for cognitive
and affective interventions. Furthermore, it pioneers future work integrating genetics,
epigenetics and early neurocognitive measures of social attention in large prospective
longitudinal studies of individuals at increased vulnerability for neurodevelopmental disorders,
to shed light on the developmental mechanisms underlying the emergence of ASD