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A Within-subjects Experimental Protocol to Assess the Effects of Social Input on Infant EEG

Despite the importance of social interactions for infant brain development, little research has assessed functional neural activation while infants ...

Boston University

To explore how being at high risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), based on having an older sibling diagnosed with ASD, affects word comprehension and language processing speed, 18-, 24- and 36-month-old children, at high and low risk for ASD were tested in a cross- sectional study, on an eye gaze measure of receptive language that measured how accurately and rapidly the children looked at named target images. There were no significant differences between the high risk ASD group and the low risk control group of 18- and 24-month-olds. However, 36-month-olds in the high risk for ASD group performed significantly worse on the accuracy measure, but not on the speed measure. We propose that the language processing efficiency of the high risk group is not compromised, but other vocabulary acquisition factors might have lead to the high risk 36-month-olds to comprehend significantly fewer nouns on our measure.

Eye-tracking measurements of language processing: developmental differences in children at high risk for ASD.

Determining whether social attention is reduced in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and what factors influence social attention is important to our theoretical understanding of developmental trajectories of ASD and to designing targeted interventions for ASD. This meta-analysis examines data from 38 articles that used eye-tracking methods to compare individuals with ASD and TD controls. In this paper, the impact of eight factors on the size of the effect for the difference in social attention between these two groups are evaluated: age, non-verbal IQ matching, verbal IQ matching, motion, social content, ecological validity, audio input and attention bids. Results show that individuals with ASD spend less time attending to social stimuli than typically developing (TD) controls, with a mean effect size of 0.55. Social attention in ASD was most impacted when stimuli had a high social content (showed more than one person). This meta-analysis provides an opportunity to survey the eye-tracking research on social attention in ASD and to outline potential future research directions, more specifically research of social attention in the context of stimuli with high social content.

Meia Chita-Tegmark

Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Boston University

A Within-subjects Experimental Protocol to Assess the Effects of Social Input on Infant EEG

Meia Chita-Tegmark

.css-o250i3{font-size:18px;font-family:Open Sans,sans-serif;line-height:21.6px;}Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Boston University

A Within-subjects Experimental Protocol to Assess the Effects of Social Input on Infant EEG

Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences