Costanzo Valeria, Narzisi Antonio, Cerullo Sonia, Crifaci Giulia, Boncoddo Maria, Turi Marco, Apicella Fabio, Tancredi Raffaella, Muratori Filippo, Calderoni Sara, Billeci Lucia
Department of Developmental Neuroscience, IRCCS Fondazione Stella Maris, 56128 Calambrone, Italy.
Child Psychopathology Unit, Scientific Institute IRCCS Eugenio Medea, Via Don Luigi Monza 20, Bosisio Parini, 22040 Lecco, Italy.
J Pers Med. 2022 Oct 29;12(11):1789. doi: 10.3390/jpm12111789.
Joint attention (JA)-the human ability to coordinate our attention with that of other people-is impaired in the early stage of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, little is known about the JA skills in the younger siblings of children with ASD who do not develop ASD at 36 months of age [high-risk (HR)-noASD]. In order to advance our understanding of this topic, a prospective multicenter observational study was conducted with three groups of toddlers (age range: 18-33 months): 17 with ASD, 19 with HR-noASD and 16 with typical development (TD). All subjects underwent a comprehensive clinical assessment and an eye-tracking experiment with pre-recorded stimuli in which the visual patterns during two tasks eliciting initiating joint attention (IJA) were measured. Specifically, fixations, transitions and alternating gaze were analyzed. Clinical evaluation revealed that HR-noASD subjects had lower non-verbal cognitive skills than TD children, while similar levels of restricted and repetitive behaviors and better social communication skills were detected in comparison with ASD children. Eye-tracking paradigms indicated that HR-noASD toddlers had visual patterns resembling TD in terms of target-object-to-face gaze alternations, while their looking behaviors were similar to ASD toddlers regarding not-target-object-to-face gaze alternations. This study indicated that high-risk, unaffected siblings displayed a shared profile of IJA-eye-tracking measures with both ASD patients and TD controls, providing new insights into the characterization of social attention in this group of toddlers.
共同注意（JA）——人类与他人协调注意力的能力——在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）早期会受损。然而，对于36个月时未患ASD的ASD患儿的年幼兄弟姐妹（高风险[HR]-无ASD）的JA技能却知之甚少。为了加深我们对这一主题的理解，我们对三组幼儿（年龄范围：18 - 33个月）进行了一项前瞻性多中心观察性研究：17名患有ASD，19名HR - 无ASD，16名发育正常（TD）。所有受试者都接受了全面的临床评估和一项使用预先录制刺激的眼动追踪实验，其中测量了两项引发发起性共同注意（IJA）任务期间的视觉模式。具体而言，分析了注视、转换和交替注视。临床评估显示，HR - 无ASD受试者的非语言认知技能低于TD儿童，而与ASD儿童相比，其受限和重复行为水平相似，但社交沟通技能更好。眼动追踪范式表明，HR - 无ASD幼儿在目标物体到面部的注视交替方面的视觉模式类似于TD幼儿，而在非目标物体到面部的注视交替方面，他们的注视行为与ASD幼儿相似。这项研究表明，高风险、未受影响的兄弟姐妹在IJA眼动追踪测量方面呈现出与ASD患者和TD对照组共有的特征，为这组幼儿社交注意力的特征描述提供了新的见解。
