title: Precursors to social and communication difficulties in infants at-risk for autism: gaze following and attentional engagement.
abstract: Whilst joint attention (JA) impairments in autism have been widely studied, little is known about the early development of gaze following, a precursor to establishing JA. We employed eye-tracking to record gaze following longitudinally in infants with and without a family history of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at 7 and 13 months. No group difference was found between at-risk and low-risk infants in gaze following behaviour at either age. However, despite following gaze successfully at 13 months, at-risk infants with later emerging socio-communication difficulties (both those with ASD and atypical development at 36 months of age) allocated less attention to the congruent object compared to typically developing at-risk siblings and low-risk controls. The findings suggest that the subtle emergence of difficulties in JA in infancy may be related to ASD and other atypical outcomes.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Research in Autism and Education, Institute of Education, University of London, 25 Woburn Square, London, UK. r.bedford@ioe.ac.uk
authors.forename: Rachael
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bedford
authors.forename: Mayada
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Elsabbagh
authors.forename: Teodora
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Gliga
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pickles
authors.forename: Atsushi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Senju
authors.forename: Tony
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Charman
authors.forename: Mark H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D035781:Siblings; D012919:Social Behavior