Visual Traces of Language Acquisition in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder During the Second Year of Life
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Visual Traces of Language Acquisition in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder During the Second Year of Life Serene Habayeb3 · Tawny Tsang4 · Celine Saulnier2,5 · Cheryl Klaiman1,2 · Warren Jones1,2 · Ami Klin1,2 · Laura A. Edwards1,2
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Infants show shifting patterns of visual engagement to faces over the first years of life. To explore the adaptive implications of this engagement, we collected eye-tracking measures on cross-sectional samples of 10–25-month-old typically developing toddlers (TD;N = 28) and those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD;N = 54). Concurrent language assessments were conducted and relationships between visual engagement and expressive and receptive language were analyzed between groups, and within ASD subgroups. TD and ASD toddlers exhibited greater mouth- than eye-looking, with TD exhibiting higher levels of mouth-looking than ASD. Mouth-looking was positively associated with expressive language in TD toddlers, and in ASD toddlers who had acquired first words. Mouth-looking was unrelated to expressive language in ASD toddlers who had not yet acquired first words. Keywords Autism spectrum disorder · Eye-tracking · Language acquisition · Heterogeneity · Social visual engagement · Infant development
Introduction Social adaptation—functioning successfully in interaction with others—and social cognition—understanding one’s social interactions with others—are built upon attention towards salient aspects of the social environment (Klin Serene Habayeb and Tawny Tsang have contributed equally to this work. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04730-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Laura A. Edwards [email protected] 1
Marcus Autism Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, 1920 Briarcliff Road NE, Atlanta, GA 30329, USA
2
Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA
3
Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders, Children’s National Health System, Washington, DC, USA
4
Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
5
Neurodevelopmental Assessment & Consulting Services, Decatur, GA, USA
et al. 2003). Over the course of the first two years of life, typically developing (TD) infants exhibit developmental changes in the way that they visually attend to talking faces: subsequent to an early period of predominant eye-looking, mouth-looking increases as children approach 18 months, but then decreases as children approach 24 months, offset by increasing eye-looking (Hillairet de Boisferon et al. 2018; Jones and Klin 2013; Lewkowicz and Hansen-Tift 2012). Attention to others’ eyes is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism of social adaptive action in general that emerges early in human development (Bard et al. 2005; Emery 2000; Farroni et al. 2002). More specifically, it is believed to aid in inferring information about others’ emotional an
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