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Responses to the Negative Emotions of Others by Autistic, Mentally Retarded, and Normal Children
Abstract
Attention, facial affect, and behavioral responses to adults showing distress, fear, and discomfort were compared for autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children. The normal and mentally retarded children were very attentive to adults in all 3 situations. In contrast, many of the autistic children appeared to ignore or not notice the adults showing these negative affects. As a group, the autistic children looked at the adults less and were much more engaged in toy play than the other children during periods when an adult pretended to be hurt. The autistic children were also less attentive to adults showing fear, although their behavior was not different from the normal children. Few of the children in any group showed much facial affect in response to these situations. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of affect in the social learning experiences of the young child.
... Second, cognitive empathy is defined as the understanding of others' emotions (Decety, 2015). This capacity allows people to intentionally take others' perspective and understand the reasons for others' Sigman et al. (1992) Children with ID TD children Children with ASD Developmental ...
... Given the lack of studies using a multi-method and a double matching for chronological and developmental ages to identify empathy profiles in children with ID, including and inclusion. Although some studies have explored children with ID's empathic skills (e.g., Corona et al., 1998;Sigman et al., 1992), none of them has effectively tested delay versus difference hypotheses or been based on recent conceptions of empathy. However, previous comparative studies have provided some information about empathic skills of children with ID but the results did not converge through studies (see Table 1 for a summary). ...
... However, previous comparative studies have provided some information about empathic skills of children with ID but the results did not converge through studies (see Table 1 for a summary). For example, Sigman et al. (1992) did not find any difference between children with ID and TD children matched for developmental age (mean age of 2 years) in their empathic reactions. Based on an observational design, both groups paid more attention to and were more concerned about an adult expressing distress, fear, or discomfort than was the case with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ...
Objectives
Two studies were conducted to better understand how children with intellectual disabilities (ID) empathize with the feelings of others during social interactions. The first study tested hypotheses of developmental delay or difference regarding empathy in 79 children with ID by comparing them with typically developing (TD) children, matched for developmental age or chronological age. The second study examined specific aspects of empathy in 23 children with Down syndrome (DS), compared with 23 nonspecific ID children, matched for developmental age, and TD children, matched for developmental age or chronological age.
Method
An empathy task was administered to the children while their parents completed the French versions of the Empathy Questionnaire and the Griffith Empathy Measure.
Results
The first study showed that ID children showed delayed empathy development but were perceived by their parents as deficient in cognitive empathy. The second study showed that DS children were perceived as being more attentive to the feelings of others than TD children and non-specific ID children, matched for developmental age, and as having affective empathy that was similar to that of TD children matched for chronological age.
Conclusion
These studies have drawn attention to delays or differences in different dimensions of empathy in children with ID and DS, which need to be taken into account in interventions.
... While it has been widely debated that empathy disorder is correlated to individuals with autism, research strongly supports the idea that children with ASD express less empathic responses than typically developed children (Corona, Dissanayake, Arbelle, Wellington, & Sigman, 1998, Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992. 4 Multiple theories and experimental studies corroborate that cognitive and affective domains of empathy contribute to the deficit in individuals with ASD. These theories include, but are not limited to, mirror neuron dysfunction (Oberman, Hubbard, McCleery, Altschuler, Ramachandran, & Pineda, 2005), theory of mind deficit (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985), empathizing-systemizing theory (Baron-Cohen, 2009), alexithymia (Bird & Cook, 2013) and empathetic responsiveness deficit (Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992, Schrandt, Townsend, & Poulson, 2009. ...
... 4 Multiple theories and experimental studies corroborate that cognitive and affective domains of empathy contribute to the deficit in individuals with ASD. These theories include, but are not limited to, mirror neuron dysfunction (Oberman, Hubbard, McCleery, Altschuler, Ramachandran, & Pineda, 2005), theory of mind deficit (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985), empathizing-systemizing theory (Baron-Cohen, 2009), alexithymia (Bird & Cook, 2013) and empathetic responsiveness deficit (Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992, Schrandt, Townsend, & Poulson, 2009. Empathy deficits impair the development of social relationships due to the fact that people tend to interact less frequently with individuals who don't exhibit empathetic response (Schrandt, Townsend, & Poulson, 2009). ...
... Measuring empathetic behavior in individuals with ASD through the empathy-evoking situation (Butean, Costescu, & Dobrean 2014) several experimental group design studies support the claim that children with ASD exhibit less empathic responses when compared to typically developed children (Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992, Baron-Cohen, 2009, 2014, Butean, Costescu, & Dobrean, 2014. ...
Recent research supports the idea that children with ASD express less empathetic responding than typically developed children. However, limited studies have focused on the utilization of evidence-based practices to teach these skills. In this study, a multiple baseline design across three participants diagnosed with autism was implemented to assess the efficacy of digital comic strip conversations, which include answering comprehension questions and engaging in role-play, to teach verbal and non-verbal empathetic responding. Digital comic strips conversations were developed specifically for the study to depict three emotional domains: happiness or excitement, sadness or pain, and fear in a variety of social contexts. Both verbal and non-verbal empathetic responding were assessed concurrently within the same sessions. Moreover, two different five level rating scales were utilized to code the behavioral response. Upon the introduction of treatments, an increase of empathetic responding was recorded across all three participants, maintaining highest score according to rating scale for the majority of the data points throughout the intervention phase. However, the generalization phase of both verbal and non-verbal response conveyed inconsistent results across participants. Further research is needed to assess complementary treatment modalities as well as evaluating factors underlying generalization difficulties of skills for individuals with autism that are acquired in clinical practice.
... Two follow-up studies o f the original sample o f children with autism who took part in the above studies (Sigman et al., 1992;Kasari et al., 1993a) and Kasari et al. (1993b) re-assessed the children at school-age to investigate short and long-term stability o f responses to other person's affect (Dissanayake, Sigman and Kasari, 1996). In the first follow-up study, 17 months after children's initial visit to the laboratory, children were exposed to the distress o f an adult who pretended to hurt her finger by hitting it with a toy hammer. ...
... In the first experiment, children were engaged in playing at a tea party when an adult, who entered the room, pretended to hurt her knee and began to cry in pain. In the second experiment, children were exposed to two staged telephone conversations while they were sitting at the Another study by Corona, Dissanayake, Arbelle, Wellington, and Sigman (1998) investigated a group o f pre-school children with autism with the "distress paradigm" adopted by Sigman et al. (1992) by adding a control condition. Thus, the experimenter pretended to hurt herself and showed either distressed or neutral expressions. ...
... In all the above studies conducted by Sigman and colleagues (Sigman et al., 1992;Kasari et al., 1993a,b;Dissanayake et al., 1996;Corona et al., 1998) a possible reason why children with autism fail to respond to others' emotions, in comparison to control children, may stem from a lack of understanding of these events, rather than an insensitivity to the display of emotions. More specifically, an impairment in mentalising could be an alternative explanation, since these tasks require that children understand that other people may have different mental states from their own. ...
The main focus of this thesis was to investigate the nature of stimuli that provoke the pervasive tendency of people to explain behaviour in terms of mental states (Theory of Mind). A series of experimental tasks was designed to test the "Theory of Mind deficit" hypothesis with high-functioning individuals with autism by using non-verbal stimuli in both behavioural and neuroimaging (PET) studies. The first three experiments explored the most familiar visual inputs that trigger the attribution of mental states, namely, emotional faces. Children with autism were as able as controls to recognise basic emotions. The fourth and fifth experiments explored the simplest forms of visual information for judging agents' intentions, namely, their motion pattern. Children with autism were as able as controls to attribute an intended goal to an agent in the presence of its unsuccessful outcome. However, they responded similarly to younger control children in the presence of a sudden change in the agent's motion direction. This result is compatible with a developmental delay in autism in the representation of goal-directed motion. The last two PET studies were based on the perception of silent computer animations. These animations depicted two interacting characters whose movement patterns evoked descriptions either in mentalistic terms or in behavioural terms. The first PET study identified brain activity in healthy volunteers while watching the animations. The second PET study investigated brain activity in a group of adults with autism during the same task. Verbal descriptions of the animations showed a mentalising deficit in the autism group. Neuroimaging findings revealed that the autism group showed reduced activation and reduced functional connectivity in several areas of the previously identified mentalising network. These findings are evaluated in the context of the metarepresentational model and the Theory of Mind deficit hypothesis of autism, and suggestions for further research are discussed.
... Another set of studies has examined the interpersonal coordination of affect between autistic children and adults, where the adults have simulated feelings of fear, distress and discomfort (Sigman et al 1992). The behaviour of 30 autistic children (mean age 4 years) was observed and coded when an adult pretended to hurt herself with a hammer, to be frightened by a remote-controlled robot and to be taken ill, feigning discomfort. ...
... It is the emotional deadness, experienced in the absence of empathie feeling, absence of attention to people and indifference to the feeling states of others (Sigman et al 1992) which breeds despair in the mothers and carers of children with autism. Individuals classified as preoccupied and entangled (E category) are confused, passive and vague or angry and resentful. ...
... Maternal preoccupation or 'reverie', which is an essential factor in maternal attunement becomes problematical when mothers are already internally preoccupied. There is evidence too from observations in both clinical and experimental settings that autistic children, themselves, universally display a lack of attunement to the feelings of others (Sigman et al 1992). ...
In this thesis, maternal attachment of mothers having a child with autism is compared with that of two control groups of mothers, one having Down syndrome children and the other, Rett syndrome children. Attachment status was rated using the Adult Attachment Interview. It was hypothesised that having a child with autism may serve to disorganise the attachment system in mothers and this in turn may complicate the parent -child relationship which is clinically observed in this group. The hypothesis was explored in the context of a detailed study of the narratives of a small group of mothers with learning impaired children. The thesis reviews the literature using the Adult Attachment Interview in the context of psychological disturbance and parent-child relationships, together with the smaller body of work on the Reflective Function Scale, a measure of mentalisation derived from AAI narratives. The literature on maternal attachment in cases of severe psychological disturbance is reviewed along with relevant developmental and psychoanalytic writings. The role of primitive emotional containment in mental development and learning is investigated and related to the factors involved in maternal attunement and the generation of attention. Attunement and attention, both associated with secure personality development, are manifestly deficient in the autistic child. The study samples were 58 subjects (autism group = 27, Down syndrome group = 16, Rett syndrome group = 15). Methods pertinent to parent-child relationships in autism were identified through close scrutiny of the content and form of mothers' narratives of their own attachment histories. The scoring and classification of the interviews is described. A range of variables was found to distinguish the autism group. These involve references to violence, concerns about space and the incidence of disruptions of turn taking and interruptions of the interview process. Results show consistent differences between the index and control groups, supporting the hypothesis of higher levels of disturbances in the attachment system of mothers with children with autism. The results are discussed in terms of the clinical value of recognising these differences in the course of individual and family treatments of these children. More generally, the approach taken in this thesis, combining quantitative and qualitative research methods in the study of parent-child relationships in families with major psychiatric disturbance in the child, are explored and evaluated.
... Целью данной работы являлся анализ возможностей формирования и проявления эмпатии у людей с РАС. Термин «эмпатия» относят к способности принимать чужую точку зрения [Sigman et al., 1992;Waal, 2008] и испытывать конгруэнтное эмоциональное состояние [Yirmiya et al., 1992]. ...
... Люди с РАС, как правило, нечувствительны к непредвиденным обстоятельствам социального подкрепления. Зигман [Sigman et al., 1992] считает, что дефицит эмпатии возникает из-за дефицита внимания. Некоторые исследователи полагают, что причина отсутствия эмпатического реагирования кроется в проблеме контроля стимулов, проявляющейся в чрезмерной избирательности при реагировании на стимулы, то есть в реакции не на стимул целиком, а лишь на отдельные его стороны (чаще на одну) [Bailey, 1981]. ...
The purpose of this work was to analyze the possibilities of formation and manifestation of empathy in people with ASD. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), the deficit of socio-emotional reciprocity, which includes a reduced exchange of interests, emotions and affection, is defined as one of the diagnostic criteria of ASD.The analysis of papers covering this topic has shown that a decrease in empathic manifestations in people with ASD may be associated with unexplored relationships between the affective stimuli and corresponding empathic reactions. To correct this mismatch, a training program aimed at the formation of appropriate vocal and motor reactions in response to affectively charged situations presented was developed. Diagnostics of the initial level of empathic response showed that the main deficiency behind the lack or weak development of empathy is the inability to correlate the context of the situation and the relevance of a certain reaction (even if this reaction is present in the behavioral repertoire).The implementation of our program showed that 7–8-year-old children with autism can learn to demonstrate socially significant empathic response skills in pre-game conditions, and that these skills can extend to situations and toys not intended for learning, as well as situations in natural conditions. It is connected with the possibility of correlating the context and the relevance of a certain reaction. In other words, we can conclude that empathic response is available for children with ASD.At the same time, we came to a conclusion that people with ASD are characterized by an inconsistency in manifestation of affective reactions, including empathic ones, which predetermines difficulties in other people’s perceiving of such manifestations. Consistency in the manifestation of empathic response implies the contextual unity of eye contact, facial expressions, intonation accompaniment, and vocal and motor manifestations. As the results of this study show, we can help children and adults with ASD to show contextual components of the empathic response. The integration of empathic manifestations into a coordinated affective response was not observed in this study. To what extent such integration is fundamentally achievable and what are the ways and prospects for the formation of a coordinated empathic response is a question for future research.
... Therefore, a characterization of empathic behavior in actual social situations among individuals with ASD is required. Indeed, studies that employ naturalistic examinations of empathy are scarce, and have mainly focused on infants and young children, who were found to show fewer pro-social behaviors towards an adult in pain (Charman et al., 1997;Sigman et al., 1992;Travis et al., 2001). ...
... Adolescents in both groups responded with similar levels of expressed empathy when the social partner shared her distress and when she returned to a friendly conversation. This indicates adequate capability to recognize and attend to the partner's sudden distress, and challenges previous reports of poorer empathic and pro-social behaviors among younger children with ASD (Charman et al., 1997;Sigman et al., 1992;Travis et al., 2001). We tested our hypotheses in adolescents with no comorbid intellectual impairment, who, through maturation and experience, may have developed compensatory mechanisms (Livingston et al., 2019), which could explain their intact patterns of response. ...
Individuals with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show altered behavioral synchrony and empathic behavior. Yet, an ecologically valid examination of these in adolescents is still required. We employed a social interaction sequence comprising a friendly conversation with a confederate, an expression of distress by her, and a return to friendly conversation. 44 male adolescents (22 with ASD) participated. Socio-emotional behaviors, coded by blind raters and through automated analyses of motion, were analyzed. Results indicated reduced synchrony in the ASD group. Moreover, whereas controls displayed a decrease in synchrony when facing another’s distress, adolescents with ASD showed no such change. No group differences were found on empathic behavior. Findings imply gaps between verbal and non-verbal responses of adolescents with ASD to a distressed interaction partner.
... Hay un número significativo de estudios que defienden la existencia de un déficit en personas con autismo en el reconocimiento y comprensión de emociones, después de compararlos con grupos control ( Baron-Cohen, Hobson, 1986aHobson, , 1986bOzonoff, Pennington & Rogers, 1990;Rump et al., 2009;Yirmiya, Sigman, Kasari, & Mundy, 1992). Algunos estudios delimitan el déficit en el reconocimiento de emociones concretas como el miedo (De Jong, van Engelund & Kemner, 2008;Pelphrey et al., 2002), la tristeza (Boraston et al., 2007) o emociones -negativas‖ (Ashwin et al., 2006;Humphreys et al., 2007), mostrando en líneas generales menos atención a emociones negativas (Sigman, Kasari, Kwon & Yirmiya, 1992). Este déficit en el reconocimiento de emociones está acompañado de cierta falta de interés por parte de las personas con autismo hacia las emociones de los demás (Begeer, Rieffe, Meerum Terwogt & Stockmann, 2006;Weeks & Hobson, 1987;Pelphrey et al., 2002), y una menor atención a estímulos sociales (Chevallier et al., 2013). ...
... Hemos visto como para muchos teóricos el déficit en el reconocimiento de emociones a través del rostro es nuclear en los Trastornos del Espectro Autista (Baron-Cohen, 1993;Frith, 1989;Hobson, Ouston & Lee, 1989). En resumen, los resultados del presente estudio apoyan resultados anteriores en cuanto a la problemática presentada por personas con autismo a la hora de realizar tareas de reconocimiento emocional (Deruelle, Rondan, Gepner & Tardif, 2004;Garcia-Villamisar, Rojahn, Zaja & Jodra, 2010;Hobson, 1986aHobson, , 1986bOzonoff, Pennington & Rogers, 1990;Sigman, Kasari, Kwon & Yirmiya, 1992), específicamente en tareas de reconocimiento emocional a través del rostro (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001a;Bölte & Poustka, 2003;Clark, Winkielman & McIntosh, 2008;Gepner et al., 1996;Golarai et al., 2006;Kirchner, Hatri, Heekeren & Dziobek, 2011;Klin, Sparrow, de Bilt, Cicchetti, Cohen & Volkmar, 1999;Preston & de Waal, 2002). ...
Based on the distinction between "hot" and "cool" executive functions
(Zelazo & Müller, 2002), a research line that aims to study the relationship
between executive functions related to emotions (―hot") and socio-emotional
deficits observed in ASD, began. The main objective of this study is to analyze
the psychopathological correlates of emotional deficits in ASD.
This work arises in this theoretical framework and aims to study socioemotional
deficits in adults with autism, in relation to both "hot" and ―cool‖
executive dysfunctions, social maturity, autistic traits and comorbid
psychopathology, specifying which variables influence or explain the perception
of emotions in Autism Spectrum Disorders. Four experiments were designed,
linked to the 4 general objectives of the research:
1. Confirm the presence of emotional perception deficits in adults with ASD, compared to the control group (no TEA).
2. Confirm the presence of deficits in executive functions attributed to the ASD group, compared to the control group (no TEA).
3. Specify which variables influence, or explain, the perception of emotions in adults with autism, in order to find out the nature of emotional deficits in people with autism.
4. Establish if certain emotional permeability exists in the experimental group (TEA), through a task of emotion induction.
... Structured observation (Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992). The purpose of this tool is to examine the response of the participants to the social expression of others in three different situations: someone expressing pain, pretending to be ill, and expressing fear of a noisy toy. ...
... First, we must address the research population, differentiating between those with ASD or with HFASD. The study by Sigman et al. (1992), which examined the prosocial ability in children with ASD, indicates low abilities compared to those with TD; however, this study did not specifically address children with HFASD. There are studies showing that there is a significant difference between the social functioning abilities of children with ASD and children with HFASD, and that children with HFASD more frequently attempt to establish social contact and have higher social abilities than children with LFASD (Bauminger et al., 2003). ...
The study refers to the social aspect of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and focuses on pro‐social behaviour that has a positive effect on social adaptability. The first goal of the study was to determine whether there is a gap in prosocial‐behaviour between children with High‐Functioning ASD (HFASD) and children with typical‐development; and secondly, to foster prosocial‐behaviour with a computer‐mediated intervention versus a non‐computer‐mediated intervention. The study comprises 58 preschool children, divided into three groups: HFASD experiencing a computer‐mediated intervention, HFASD experiencing a non‐computer‐mediated intervention, and typically‐developing children with no intervention. The 2‐month intervention was based on the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy model, and pairs of children learned how to solve social‐problems. Following preliminary screening tests (PPVT; SCQ), observations designed to evaluate prosocial‐ability and Vineland questionnaires measuring prosocial‐behaviour were conducted pre‐ and post‐intervention. Pre‐intervention findings indicated that children with typical‐development exhibited higher prosocial‐behaviour than children with HFASD. This changed however, post‐intervention, as the gap between the two groups decreased. Additionally, the study found that the computer‐mediated intervention group improved in some prosocial measures compared to the non‐computer‐mediated intervention.
... In typically developing individuals, empathy leads to prosocial behaviors such as helping, comforting, and sharing in order to alleviate another's distress. However, in individuals with ASD, these types of prosocial behaviors are largely absent (Sigman et al. 1992). Some hypothesize that this lack of prosociality is mainly due to an impaired cognitive empathy, which refers to the ability to adopt another's point of view in order to facilitate the interpretation of others' emotions (Leiberg and Anders 2006). ...
... That is, children who scored higher on the M-CHAT demonstrated significantly less instrumental helping, less imitation, and required more explicit prompts before demonstrating empathetic helping. Interestingly, findings for all three tasks could reflect the lack of prosociality found in individuals with ASD (Sigman et al. 1992). According to previous findings, individuals with ASD show deficits in prosocial behavior due to their impaired cognitive empathy. ...
The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) is a screening questionnaire for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Previous findings have confirmed the M-CHAT's sensitivity and specificity across several cultures, yet few studies have considered M-CHAT scores as a distributed trait in a sample of typical infants. The current study examined how the M-CHAT predicts concurrent word learning (experiment 1) as well as socio-emotional understanding (experiment 2) in 18-month-old infants. Results demonstrated that the number of items endorsed on the M-CHAT negatively correlated with the proportion of trials on which infants looked at a toy named by the experimenter as well as performance on the word learning task. In experiment 2, high scores on the M-CHAT correlated with less instrumental helping, less imitation, and a smaller productive vocabulary size.
... Structured observation (Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992). The purpose of this tool is to examine the response of the participants to the social expression of others in three different situations: someone expressing pain, pretending to be ill, and expressing fear of a noisy toy. ...
... First, we must address the research population, differentiating between those with ASD or with HFASD. The study by Sigman et al. (1992), which examined the prosocial ability in children with ASD, indicates low abilities compared to those with TD; however, this study did not specifically address children with HFASD. There are studies showing that there is a significant difference between the social functioning abilities of children with ASD and children with HFASD, and that children with HFASD more frequently attempt to establish social contact and have higher social abilities than children with LFASD (Bauminger et al., 2003). ...
... Dawson et al. (2004) stated that these early impairments in social attention deprive the child with ASD of social information input during infancy, which further disrupts normal brain and behavioral development. For example, evidence has been found that suggests that disorders of social attention could be related to ASD -children's failure to respond to the emotional distress of others (Sigman et al., 1992). Social-emotional cognition comprises complex processes, including perceiving, encoding, recalling, and responding to interpersonal cues, which have been consistently linked to activity in the amygdala and related structures (McClure, 2007). ...
... Humans show a natural preference to look at faces and face-like stimuli over nonsocial stimuli, a phenomenon that can already be observed in very young children (Frazier Norbury et al., 2009). Social attention can be divided into three constructs (Dawson et al., 2004): Social orienting (i.e., the ability to direct one's attention to another person, spontaneously or when requested; Guillon et al., 2014), joint attention (i.e., the capacity to share attention with others in a coordinated way; Nation & Penny, 2008), and attending to the distress and emotions of others (i.e., the ability to understand and communicate about emotional states and desires; Sigman et al., 1992). These three constructs are crucial in early development; children with impaired social attention may experience difficulties with understanding the social world around them, which may result in compromised development of adaptive social behaviors. ...
Objective
Children with sex chromosome trisomy (SCT) have an increased risk for suboptimal development. Difficulties with language are frequently reported, start from a very young age, and encompass various domains. This cross-sectional study examined social orientation with eye tracking and physiological arousal responses to gain more knowledge on how children perceive and respond to communicative bids and evaluated the associations between social orientation and language outcomes, concurrently and 1 year later.
Method
In total, 107 children with SCT (33 XXX, 50 XXY, and 24 XYY) and 102 controls (58 girls and 44 boys) aged between 1 and 7 years were included. Assessments took place in the USA and Western Europe. A communicative bids eye tracking paradigm, physiological arousal measures, and receptive and expressive language outcomes were used.
Results
Compared to controls, children with SCT showed reduced attention to the face and eyes of the on-screen interaction partner and reduced physiological arousal sensitivity in response to direct versus averted gaze. In addition, social orientation to the mouth was related to concurrent receptive and expressive language abilities in 1-year-old children with SCT.
Conclusions
Children with SCT may experience difficulties with social communication that extend past the well-recognized risk for early language delays. These difficulties may underlie social–behavioral problems that have been described in the SCT population and are an important target for early monitoring and support.
... First, observational designs have been set up to decode facial affect or gestural reactions to others' emotions and distress in situations where adults simulate the expression of these emotions, to identify the level of empathy in infants, toddlers or preschoolers (e.g. Kochanska et al., 2010;Sigman et al. 1992;Spinrad & Stifter, 2006;Skwerer & Tager-Flusberg, 2016;Zahn-Waxler et al., 1992a, b). These coding methods are expensive to use with large samples and offer a limited approach to empathy skills depending on very specific target contexts. ...
This study aimed to validate a French adaptation of the Griffith Empathy Measure (GEM-vf). Belgian mothers of 516 children from 3 to 12 years old completed the French versions of the GEM, the Empathy Questionnaire (EmQue-vf), the Theory of Mind Inventory-1 (ToMI-1-vf) and the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC-vf). The Theory of Mind Task Battery was administered to the children. A principal component analysis showed a two-factor structure in GEM-vf: affective and cognitive empathy. Internal consistency was good. The GEM-vf scores varied depending on age. Affective empathy was higher in girls. In terms of convergent validity, positive and significant correlations were obtained between total, affective and cognitive empathy scores in GEM-vf and scores in ToM skills and in emotion regulation. The three scores in GEM-vf were negatively and significantly correlated with emotion dysregulation. In a subsample of 299 children from 3 to 6 years old, positive and significant correlations were found between scores for total and affective empathy in GEM-vf and for attention to others’ feelings and prosocial actions in EmQue-vf. Cognitive empathy scores in GEM-vf were significantly related to those for prosocial actions in EmQue-vf. The GEM-vf presents good reliability and validity and could be useful to assess typically and atypically developing children in research and clinical practice.
... There is no significant association between age of the children with autism and their level of affective understanding and perspective taking skills as perceived by the teachers. Studies pertaining to discriminating emotional states and perspective taking among autistic and normally developing children, has revealed that children with autism show considerable skill on identifying the emotional states though, not up to the standard of normally developing children (Sigman et al., 1992). Children with autism were also reported to show the qualities of friendship like sharing, intimacy and sense of self worth which is again a proof of better affective understanding and perspective taking (Bauminger, 2003). ...
... Similarly, the construction of representations of self and others' emotional lives appears to be altered in the development of many children on the autism spectrum. The vocabularies of young children on the autism spectrum include fewer exemplars of mentalizing words as do other children (King et al., 2013;Tager-Flusberg, 1992), and many autistic children react atypically to others' emotional displays in ways that suggest altered emotion understanding (Nuske et al., 2013;Sigman et al., 1992). ...
Many children on the autism spectrum are capable of learning large amounts of material in specific areas - yet, they often show learning delays across multiple domains. Additionally, they typically show the ability and motivation to learn from practice and from the outcomes of their own actions while having difficulties learning from novel situations and from others’ actions and communications. We propose that these and other phenomena reflect, in part, an atypical balance between cognitive assimilation and accommodation processes during early childhood. Adopting a constructivist perspective that connects Piaget’s heuristics with experimental and clinical research in autism, we examine empirical supports as well as implications of this notion for autism research, advocacy, and intervention.
... García-Pérez et al. suggest that children with ASD show a deficient propensity to engage with the bodily-expressed attitudes of others (also see Hobson & Lee, 1998). Children with ASD are less likely than matched controls to spontaneously respond with speech or gesture, to make eye contact, to engage in joint attention, joint action or social referencing (Dawson et al., 1990;Kasari et al., 1990;Phillips et al., 1992Phillips et al., , 1995Sigman et al., 1992;Snow et al., 1987;Stone et al., 1994). They may also be impaired in perceiving the vitality forms in the other person's communicative style (Di Cesare et al., 2017). ...
We take a wide view of social cognition to include embodied and situated processes of intersubjective interaction, which include, for example, nonverbal cues, joint attention and joint action, social affordances and direct enactive perception of intentions and affective states. In this article we propose a model that can help to capture and organize the many different factors involved in social cognition, and we evaluate how this model may inform research on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Specifically, we propose that social interaction can be viewed as a form of embodied-situated performance. In this respect the model of a meshed architecture, borrowed from performance studies, can provide some insight into social cognition, and specifically into social cognitive problems in ASD. As currently understood this model integrates cognitive and embodied motoric processes. We have developed a more enhanced model of a meshed architecture that applies more generally to situated cognition, and we apply this enhanced model to studies on social cognition and ASD.
... While these results provide strong evidence of differences in face processing in autistic people, the findings are limited to children and young adults (e.g. Dawson et al., 2002;Gepner et al., 1996;Klin et al., 1999;Sigman et al., 1992). If differences in holistic face processing are a core aspect of being autistic, then these differences should be present across the lifespan, in parallel with social communication difficulties. ...
Lay abstract:
Some theories suggested that social difficulties in autism arise from differences in the processing of faces. If face-processing difficulties are central to autism, then they should be as persistent as social difficulties across the lifespan. We tested this by asking autistic and neurotypical participants between 30 and 75 years to complete face detection tasks. Both autistic and neurotypical adults responded more slowly with age. When participants had to respond quickly, autistic adults made more errors in face detection regardless of their age. However, when the time constraint was removed, autistic adults performed as well as the neurotypical group. Across tasks, autistic adults responded more slowly when asked to detect both face and non-face stimuli. We also investigated brain activation differences in the face detection task with functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results indicated lower activation in the autism group in the left and right superior frontal gyrus. The superior frontal gyrus is not typically implicated in face processing but in more general processing, for example, keeping instructions in mind and following them. Together with the behavioral results, this suggests that there is no specific deficit in face processing in autistic adults between 30 and 75 years. Instead, the results suggest differences in general processing, particularly in the speed of processing. However, this needs to be investigated further with methods that are more sensitive to the timing of brain activation.
... Infants with ASD lack early social predispositions (Klin et al., 2002;Dawson et al., 2004), and these deficits continue into adulthood (Pelphrey et al., 2002;Kliemann et al., 2010). Evidence further suggests that the deliberate recognition of, and orienting toward, different emotional expressions are impaired in ASD individuals (Sigman et al., 1992;Bacon et al., 1998;Humphreys et al., 2007). On the other hand, individuals with WS, a rare genetic disorder associated with hypersociality, exhibit heightened social engagement, increased attention to faces, and uninhibited approach to strangers (Barak and Feng, 2016). ...
To competently navigate the world, individuals must flexibly balance distinct aspects of social gaze, orienting toward others and inhibiting orienting responses, depending on the context. These behaviors are often disrupted in patient populations treated with serotonergic drugs. However, the field lacks a clear understanding of how the serotonergic system mediates social orienting and inhibiting behaviors. Here, we tested how increasing central concentrations of serotonin with the direct precursor 5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) would modulate the ability of rhesus macaques (both sexes) to use eye movements to flexibly orient to, or inhibit orienting to, faces. Systemic administrations of 5-HTP effectively increased central serotonin levels and impaired flexible orientation and inhibition. Critically, 5-HTP selectively impaired the ability of monkeys to inhibit orienting to face images, whereas it similarly impaired orienting to face and control images. 5-HTP also caused monkeys to perseverate on their gaze responses, making them worse at flexibly switching between orientating and inhibiting behaviors. Furthermore, the effects of 5-HTP on performance correlated with a constriction of the pupil, an increased time to initiate trials, and an increased reaction time, suggesting that the disruptive effects of 5-HTP on social gaze behaviors are likely driven by a downregulation of arousal and motivational states. Taken together, these findings provide causal evidence for a modulatory relationship between 5-HTP and social gaze behaviors in non-human primates and offer translational insights for the role of the serotonergic system in social gaze.SignificanceBehavioral changes arising from pharmacological agents that target serotonergic functions are complex and difficult to predict. Here, we examined the causal impacts of administering serotonin's direct precursor, 5-Hydroxytroptohan (5-HTP), on orienting and inhibiting social gaze in non-human primates. 5-HTP increased central concentrations of serotonin and selectively impaired the ability of monkeys to inhibit orienting to faces while similarly impairing monkeys' ability to orient to face and control images. These behavioral gaze impairments were systematically associated with a downregulation of arousal and motivational states, indexed by constriction of the pupil, increased time to initiate trials, and increased reaction time. These findings provide a causal link between 5-HTP and social gaze behaviors in non-human primates and provide translational insights about serotonergic interventions.
... Individuals with autism show marked delays in social communication skills, the absence of which impacts the emergence of skills that provide a foundation for more complex social behavior. Social skills deficits in children with autism have been observed as early as 9 months of age and have implications for the development of interpersonal relationships that rely in part on the individuals' attention to and response toward affective stimuli displayed by others within reciprocal interactions (Dawson et al., 2004;Sigman et al., 1992). Observed deficits include the absence of orientation to the negative affect of others (Bacon et al., 1998), the failure to orient to common social stimuli such as clapping or singing (Dawson et al., 2004), and a lack of response to and initiation of bids for joint attention (Mundy et al., 1994). ...
Social referencing is a chain of behavior where the presence of an ambiguous stimulus evokes a gaze shift from the stimulus to another individual. The other individual's facial expression signals either the availability of reinforcement or punishment. The purpose was to teach two toddlers with autism to discriminate between safe and dangerous stimuli through a social referencing chain. Participants were trained using differential reinforcement and least‐to‐most prompting to gaze shift from an item inside of a lunchbox or a bin to an adult, and to respond differentially based on the adult's facial expression. Results showed acquisition of both the discrimination between safe and dangerous stimuli and the maintenance of a social referencing chain in the presence of unfamiliar stimuli. These findings are discussed as they relate to the implications of teaching socially valid safety skills to toddlers with autism.
... Secondly, it takes place in a familiar environment, allowing a more naturalist and ecological observation; and thirdly, similar procedures have been used in prior work on empathy development with older infants, toddlers and young children (e.g. Sigman, et al., 1992;Young, et al., 1999;Kiang et al., 2004). The behavioral responses were classified into three components, and were coded and scored as described below. ...
... Since such kind of social mediation process is disrupted in children with autism, they are unable to use this aid in understanding their own use of objects (M. D. Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992). ...
... Individuals with high levels of psychopathy show enhanced cortical excitability when viewing others in pain, but indifference to other's distress. In contrast, individuals with ASD have typical spontaneous sensorimotor responses when viewing others in pain (Fan et al., 2014;Hadjikhani et al., 2014) and show appropriate physiological arousal to others' distress (Sigman et al., 1992;Blair, 1999). Among individuals with milder symptoms of ASD, facial EMG activity, evidence of facial mimicry, and emotional contagion, is heightened compared with controls in response to happy and fearful faces (Magnée et al., 2007). ...
Both individuals with diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and individuals high in psychopathic traits show reduced susceptibility to contagious yawning; that is, yawning after seeing or hearing another person yawn. Yet it is unclear whether the same underlying processes (e.g., reduced eye gaze) are responsible for the relationship between reduced contagion and these very different types of clinical traits. College Students (n = 97) watched videos of individuals yawning or scratching (a form of contagion not reliant on eye gaze for transmission) while their eye movements were tracked. They completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), the Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R), and the Adolescent and Adult Sensory Processing Disorder Checklist. Both psychopathic traits and autistic traits showed an inverse relationship to contagious yawning, consistent with previous research. However, the relationship between autistic (but not psychopathic) traits and contagious yawning was moderated by eye gaze. Furthermore, participants high in autistic traits showed typical levels of contagious itching whereas adults high in psychopathic traits showed diminished itch contagion. Finally, only psychopathic traits were associated with lower overall levels of empathy. The findings imply that the underlying processes contributing to the disruptions in contagious yawning amongst individuals high in autistic vs. psychopathic traits are distinct. In contrast to adults high in psychopathic traits, diminished contagion may appear amongst people with high levels of autistic traits secondary to diminished attention to the faces of others, and in the absence of a background deficit in emotional empathy.
... Social communication is affected in autism, and it has been suggested that children with autism display specific impairments in social orienting, joint attention, and attention to the distress of others (Dawson et al., 1998;Osterling et al., 2002;Sigman et al., 1992). The socio-communicative impairments observed in infants with autism can affect interactions with others; infants who go on to receive a diagnosis have been observed to display less synchronous interactions with their parent (Yirmiya et al., 2006); and, generally speaking, the more severe the autism symptoms, the poorer the interaction quality (Beurkens et al., 2013). ...
Infants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (autism) have difficulty engaging in social communication and interactions with others and often experience language impairment. The use of infant-directed speech (IDS), which is the speech register used when interacting with infants, is associated with infant language and socio-communicative development. The aim of this study was twofold; the first aim was to scope the literature to determine if evidence exists for differences between the IDS caregivers use to infants at high-risk or those later diagnosed with autism, and the IDS typically spoken to neurotypical infants. The second aim was to investigate if any IDS characteristics used by caregivers of high-risk or diagnosed infant populations predicted language development. Twenty-six studies were included and provided evidence that high-risk and later diagnosed infants are exposed to similar amounts of IDS as their neurotypical peers. There is evidence, however, that the IDS used with high-risk and later diagnosed infants may comprise shorter utterances, more action-directing content, fewer questions, more attention bids, and more follow-in commenting. There is also evidence that more attention bids and follow-in commenting used to infants at high risk or those later diagnosed with autism were associated with better language abilities longitudinally.
... Infants with ASD lack early social predispositions (Klin et al., 2002;Dawson et al., 2004) and these deficits continue into adulthood (Pelphrey et al., 2002;Kliemann et al., 2010). Evidence further suggests that the deliberate recognition of, and orienting toward, different emotional expressions are impaired in ASD (Sigman et al., 1992;Bacon et al., 1998;Humphreys et al., 2007). On the other hand, individuals with WS, a rare genetic disorder associated with hyper-sociality, exhibit heightened social engagement, increased attention to faces, and uninhibited approach to strangers (Barak and Feng, 2016). ...
To competently navigate the world, individuals must flexibly balance distinct aspects of social gaze, orienting toward others and inhibiting orienting responses, depending on the context. These behaviors are often disrupted in patient populations treated with serotonergic drugs. However, the field lacks a clear understanding of how the serotonergic system mediates social orienting and inhibiting behaviors. Here, we tested how increasing central concentrations of serotonin with the direct precursor 5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) would modulate the ability of rhesus macaques to use eye movements to flexibly orient to, or inhibit orienting to, faces. Systemic administrations of 5-HTP effectively increased central serotonin levels and impaired flexible orientation and inhibition. Critically, 5-HTP selectively impaired the ability of monkeys to inhibit orienting to face images, whereas it similarly impaired orienting to face and control images. 5-HTP also caused monkeys to perseverate on their gaze responses, making them worse at flexibly switching between orientating and inhibiting behaviors. Furthermore, the effects of 5-HTP on performance correlated with a constriction of the pupil, an increased time to initiate trials, and an increased reaction time, suggesting that the disruptive effects of 5-HTP on social gaze behaviors are likely driven by a downregulation of arousal and motivational states. Taken together, these findings provide causal evidence for a modulatory relationship between 5-HTP and social gaze behaviors in non-human primates and offer translational insights for the role of the serotonergic system in social gaze.
... Alguns estudos têm mostrado que crianças com autismo são mais capazes de usar gestos para solicitar objetos ou eventos do que são capazes de usar gestos semelhantes para iniciar a atenção compartilhada (MUNDY et al., 1986). Assim, a habilidade de atenção compartilhada tem sido usada para distinguir as crianças com autismo daqueles com desenvolvimento típico em fase pré-escolar (BACON et al., 1998;CHARMAN et al., 1998;DAWSON et al., 1998;MUNDY et al., 1986;SIGMAN et al., 1992). (KASARI et al., 2005(KASARI et al., , 2006(KASARI et al., , 2008(KASARI et al., , 2010(KASARI et al., , 2014a(KASARI et al., , 2014b ...
This research is qualitative and exploratory, aiming to study the development of school students with the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) from a perspective of the Piagetian theory and empirical research on autism. Understanding and establishing relationships between Piaget's human development theory and autistic development may enable us to identify learning possibilities that can be discussed in the educational perspective. Recognizing that manifestation of autism is heterogeneous, empirical research was conducted at a special school for ASD individuals. The Piagetian clinical method was used to guide data collection and analysis. A focus group of experienced teachers was used to identify the aspects that they considered fundamental in the development and learning of autistic students. Two autistic students were selected for systematic observation at the school, one student with severe autism and the other with mild-to-moderate autism (as defined by CARS). As a source of information about the two students, interviews were conducted with their mothers, teachers, and an attendant, and daily field observations were written down to consolidate the data about each student. The data analysis revealed that socialization is a fundamental aspect of progress in the development and learning of autistic individuals, mainly in teacher-student interactions filled with affection. Both students demonstrated the fundamental characteristics of the developmental and learning process, in a framework integrating affective, cognitive, and social aspects as referred by the Piagetian perspective. Both students used visual perception as the most evident aspect of their exploration of the world, consequently imitation as a learning process is present, at academic, playful or social issues. Both students demonstrate social learning, including some behaviors' imitations. About the knowledge construction, both students showed the construction of representative thinking, one student focused on playful knowledge, and the other student on school knowledge. These characteristics are closely related to the Piagetian theory, because it is known that representative thinking occurs through imitation, symbolic play and cognitive representation. Relating the observations to the Piagetian theory, the conclusion of this research is that this is a path that could bring a significant potential to personal development and learning of individuals with ASD. Furthermore, the interest that autistic individuals have for certain objects should be considered as a source of energy that is necessary for development, which has an affective nature. Therefore, it can be understood that there exists evidence of a possible theoretical approach regarding the integration of the social, cognitive and affective aspects as evidenced by the research on autism and Piagetian theory. Understanding these aspects in an integrated manner and in continuous development allows us looking forward to productive ways of educating such students.
... From a Vygotskyan perspective, ToM development is related to language acquisition and social interactions in the family, social and cultural environment (Ricard et al., 1999). Children with IDs face difficulties in both these areas but also in developing early prerequisites of ToM abilities (such as imitation, pretend play or joint attention; Charman et al., 2000;Tourrette et al., 2000;Meltzoff, 2002;Rakoczy, 2008;Barthélémy and Tartas, 2009) and empathy (Sigman et al., 1992). The distinction between affective and cognitive ToM is relevant here, as the nature of the mental states being considered makes a difference to whether a delay or a deficit is reported (Deneault and Ricard, 2013). ...
Social cognitive abilities – notably, Theory of Mind (ToM) and social information processing (SIP) – are key skills for the development of social competence and adjustment. By understanding affective and cognitive mental states and processing social information correctly, children will be able to enact prosocial behaviors, to interact with peers and adults adaptively, and to be socially included. As social adjustment and inclusion are major issues for children with intellectual disabilities (IDs), the present study aimed to explore their social cognitive profile by combining cluster analysis of both ToM and SIP competence, and to investigate the structure of relations between these skills in children with IDs. Seventy-eight elementary school children with non-specific IDs were recruited. They had a chronological age ranging from 4 years and 8 months to 12 years and 6 months and presented a preschool developmental age. Performance-based measures were administered to assess ToM and SIP abilities. Questionnaires were completed by the children’s parents to evaluate the children’s social competence and adjustment and their risk of developing externalizing or internalizing behaviors. Exploratory analysis highlighted strengths and weaknesses in the social cognitive profiles of these children with IDs. It also emphasized that the understanding of affective and cognitive mental states was used differently when facing appropriate vs. inappropriate social behaviors. The present study leads to a better understanding of the socio-emotional profile of children with IDs and offers some suggestions on how to implement effective interventions.
... Chapter 1 reported studies exploring empathy in children with autism. These studies focused on responses to discomfort in others (Sigman, Kasari, Kwon & Yirmiya, 1992) and in high functioning school age children, these studies focused on how a main character felt after viewing scenes designed to elicit empathie responses (Yirmiya, Sigman, Kasari & Mundy, 1992). ...
The topic of this thesis is the recognition and expression of pride, guilt, shame and coyness by children with autism. It was hypothesised that these self-conscious emotions develop through a child's ability to identify with others' attitudes towards the self and that children with autism have a limited ability to identify with others this way. Correspondingly, it is expected that they will be limited in their ability to express and perhaps experience these emotions. The series of studies presented in this thesis investigate the recognition and expression of these self- conscious emotions in children with autism, relative to a chronological and verbal age matched group of children without autism. In the first study, parents were asked to describe a range of socio-emotional behaviour of their children with autism. The second study focused on parent reports of the expression of pride, guilt and shame in their children. The third study examined participants' recognition of these emotions in video-clips of enacted scenarios. Participants were then interviewed to explore their own experiences of pride, guilt and shame. Finally situations were designed to elicit pride, guilt and coyness in participants and their responses were recorded and rated. The results from the studies offer substantial but qualified support for the hypothesis. Collectively, they present a complex picture of both spared and impaired aspects of pride, guilt, shame and coyness in children with autism.
... The SIT evokes aspects of social interaction behavior previously described as atypical for individuals with ASD: Individuals with ASD share emotions of others less intensely, which has been reported for negative 23 and positive emotions. 24 The mimicry of facial expressions has been found reduced, 25 an effect that scales with severity of social dysfunction in ASD. 26 Atypical gaze patterns 27,28 are furthermore characteristic of ASD-especially the avoidance of direct eye contact. ...
Social interaction deficits are evident in many psychiatric conditions and specifically in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but hard to assess objectively. We present a digital tool to automatically quantify biomarkers of social interaction deficits: the simulated interaction task (SIT), which entails a standardized 7-min simulated dialog via video and the automated analysis of facial expressions, gaze behavior, and voice characteristics. In a study with 37 adults with ASD without intellectual disability and 43 healthy controls, we show the potential of the tool as a diagnostic instrument and for better description of ASD-associated social phenotypes. Using machine-learning tools, we detected individuals with ASD with an accuracy of 73%, sensitivity of 67%, and specificity of 79%, based on their facial expressions and vocal characteristics alone. Especially reduced social smiling and facial mimicry as well as a higher voice fundamental frequency and harmony-to-noise-ratio were characteristic for individuals with ASD. The time-effective and cost-effective computer-based analysis outperformed a majority vote and performed equal to clinical expert ratings.
... The SIT evokes aspects of social interaction behavior previously described as atypical for individuals with ASD: Individuals with ASD share emotions of others less intensely, which has been reported for negative 23 and positive emotions. 24 The mimicry of facial expressions has been found reduced, 25 an effect that scales with severity of social dysfunction in ASD. 26 Atypical gaze patterns 27,28 are furthermore characteristic of ASD-especially the avoidance of direct eye contact. ...
Social interaction deficits are evident in many psychiatric conditions and specifically in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but hard to assess objectively. We present a digital tool to automatically quantify biomarkers of social interaction deficits: the simulated interaction task (SIT), which entails a standardized 7-min simulated dialog via video and the automated analysis of facial expressions, gaze behavior, and voice characteristics. In a study with 37 adults with ASD without intellectual disability and 43 healthy controls, we show the potential of the tool as a diagnostic instrument and for better description of ASD-associated social phenotypes. Using machine-learning tools, we detected individuals with ASD with an accuracy of 73%, sensitivity of 67%, and specificity of 79%, based on their facial expressions and vocal characteristics alone. Especially reduced social smiling and facial mimicry as well as a higher voice fundamental frequency and harmony-to-noise-ratio were characteristic for individuals with ASD. The time-effective and cost-effective computer-based analysis outperformed a majority vote and performed equal to clinical expert ratings.
... Of these early behavioral markers, joint attention and gaze shift have received much attention for remediation in the behavior-analytic literature. On the contrary, social referencing has received very little focus, despite the fact that is has been argued to be important to the development of language and social skills and has been identified as a deficit of children with autism (Sigman, Kasari, Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992). This may be attributed to a confusion about the similarities and differences between joint attention and social referencing (see DeQuinzio, Poulson, Townsend, & Taylor, 2016, for a relevant discussion) and a traditional interpretation of social referencing as a developmental and socialcognitive process (Feinman, 1992). ...
We used a multiple baseline design across 4 participants to determine the effects of discrimination training, verbal instructions, and manual guidance on the differential responding of children with autism to fearful and joyful expressions within social referencing. All 4 participants learned to discriminate the expressions presented within the context of social referencing, but generalization to other people, stimuli, and settings was limited. A discussion of social referencing and future directions for research are discussed.
It has been nearly 10 years since the material for the original edition of this book was prepared. During that time, there has been dramatic growth in the fields of theory of mind, autism, and cognitive neuroscience. This new edition includes a whole section on the cognitive neuroscience of "mind-reading", bringing together varied research methods such as functional neuro-imaging, single cell recording, and neuropsychology. In addition, there is expanded coverage of primate studies and the evolution of a theory of mind, and new information relating theory of mind in clinical populations other than autism, such as schizophrenia. The original section on normal development has been updated, as has the debate over the relationship between theory of mind deficits and autism. Understanding other Minds: Perspectives from Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience remains the key sourcebook for this important area, which attracts researchers and clinicians in psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and primatology . The new material in this edition will ensure that it is essential reading for these groups. From reviews of the first edition: [This book] will be of absorbing interest to all those involved in the fields of autism and child development. It also contains thought-provoking ideas of relevance to psychology and psychiatry in general. L. Wing, National Autistic Society This book would be of great interest to researchers of child development but also to many clinicians and teachers working with individuals with autism. British Journal of Psychiatry.
Empathy is a possibility skill that is critical for social progress and human interactions. It is a nuanced, multifaceted construct that simultaneously refers to a trait and a state, a response, and a process (Cuff et al. 2016). Although defining empathy represents a research topic per se, a common operationalization refers to it as the capacity to place oneself in another’s position and understand or feel what that person is experiencing. After an overview of the historical roots of the empathy construct, this entry highlights (1) the dimensions of empathy, (2) the development of empathy, (3) protective and risks factors of empathy development, (4) the measurement of empathy, and (5) methods of prevention and intervention on empathy, with a focus on how encouraging empathy could represent an avenue of transformative change.
p>Empathic ability, emerging in the first few years of life, provides a foundation for the development of prosocial behaviour and healthy peer relationships in childhood and for later social-emotional adaptation in adulthood. Research has been limited due to difficulties in the operationalisation and measurement of the empathy construct. No formal psychometric instruments exist to assess empathy in children four years of age or younger. The first paper provides a framework for the development of a new psychometric tool to assess empathy in the preschool period. The paper explores the acquisition of empathy in the first few years of life in normative and clinical child samples. Current methods used to assess empathy in this age group are also reviewed with suggestions for future psychometric development.
The second paper investigates a new self-report instrument: The Southampton Test of Empathy in preschoolers (STEP). The test incorporates four distinct but conceptually related tasks, each assessing the child’s ability to understand and share in the emotional experience of a child protagonist. Experiment 1 describes the theoretical conception and construction of the scale. Experiment 2 explores the initial psychometric properties of internal consistency reliability and construct validity in a sample of UK preschoolers. The results show good internal consistency, concurrent validity with parent-rated empathy, and convergent validity with teacher-rated prosocial behaviour. Results are discussed in terms of recommendations for replication and further research.</p
Nowcasting, a combination of “now” and “forecast”, is the estimation of a target variable's current state, or a close approximation of it, either forwards or backwards in time, utilizing information that is available in a more timely manner. It has a wide range of applications, all of which attempt to supplement and assist users' decisions. This research applied auto-regressive moving average, neural network models, and support vector regression technique for modelling and nowcasting selected imports and exports in Bangladesh considering annual data from 1976–2020. The findings revealed that support vector models had superior performance compared to the other models considered in this study. In economic growth modelling and nowcasting purpose, the author recommends using the machine learning methodologies. It also suggests that the results be compared to classic econometric and time series models considering other variables with longer data periods.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorders and those with Williams syndrome often have impairments in social behaviors. These two neurodevelopmental disorders are often reputed to be on the opposite ends of the social spectrum, with autistic individuals being socially avoidant and those with Williams syndrome highly social. Most research on children with autism and Williams syndrome has focused on preschool and younger school-age children. The current study assessed school-age children between the ages of 7–14 years with high-functioning autism, Williams syndrome, and neurotypical developing peers. Parents completed the Salk Institute Sociability Questionnaire and the Social Responsiveness Scale, to provide unique insights into social functioning and tap into different behavioral areas, social approach behaviors, and social responsiveness. This study provides additional evidence that young children with autism and Williams syndrome continue to show divergent social-behavioral tendencies at school-age, despite controlling for age and intellect. Results of this study better elucidate disparities as well as commonalities across school-age children with neurodevelopmental disorders and their typically developing peers, providing insight into everyday social functioning.
The present study investigated the explicit and implicit theory of mind of children with developmental problems. The investigation focused on a comparison of the theory of mind of children with and without traits associated with autism spectrum disorder. The participants were 19 children in the first through sixth grades, who were attending a resource room for children with emotional disabilities in a public elementary school. An explicit false-belief task in the traditional form and an implicit false-belief task using an eye tracker were employed. The results showed that 17 of the children passed the explicit false-belief task. In the implicit false-belief task, the children with traits associated with autism spectrum disorder tended to look at inappropriate places longer than children without such traits did. They also tended not to look at the actor's face. These results suggest that the children could pass the explicit false-belief task in a structured situation by using language, which is similar to the results reported by Senju et al. (2009). However, the children in the present study, especially those with traits associated with autism spectrum disorder, often did not spontaneously understand the other person's state of mind.
Much recent attention has been directed toward elucidating the structure of social interaction–communication dimensions and whether and how these symptom dimensions coalesce with each other in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the underlying neurobiological basis of these symptom dimensions is unknown, especially the association of social interaction and communication dimensions with brain networks. Here, we proposed a method of whole-brain network-based regression to identify the functional networks linked to these symptom dimensions in a large sample of children with ASD. Connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) was established to explore neurobiological evidence that supports the merging of communication and social interaction deficits into one symptom dimension (social/communication deficits). Results showed that the default mode network plays a core role in communication and social interaction dimensions. A primary sensory perceptual network mainly contributed to communication deficits, and high-level cognitive networks mainly contributed to social interaction deficits. CPM revealed that the functional networks associated with these symptom dimensions can predict the merged dimension of social/communication deficits. These findings delineate a link between brain functional networks and symptom dimensions for social interaction and communication and further provide neurobiological evidence supporting the merging of communication and social interaction deficits into one symptom dimension.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heritable neurodevelopmental disorder that can vary considerably in severity. Autistic traits are distributed continuously across populations, even in sub-clinical individuals. Serotonin transporter-gene polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) has been studied as a candidate genetic factor related to ASD, however results have been inconsistent. 5-HTTLPR is implicated in the function of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a region associated with the social abnormalities found in ASD. Here we hypothesize that autistic traits are affected by the 5-HTTLPR genotype indirectly through mPFC mediation. Using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), we first examined mPFC activation in people with ASD when they performed a facial affect-labeling task. Compared with a typical development group, the ASD group showed significantly lower mPFC activation during the task. Using the same task paradigm, we next investigated the relationship between autistic traits and 5-HTTLPR in sub-clinical participants, and whether associations were mediated by mPFC function. Correlation analyses indicated that participants with a large number of 5-HTTLPR L-alleles had high-level autistic traits related to social skills and low right mPFC activation. We also observed a significant negative correlation between autistic traits related to social skills and right mPFC activation. Structural equation analysis suggested a significant indirect effect of 5-HTTLPR on Autism-Spectrum Quotients, with right mPFC activation acting as a mediator. These results suggest that the diverse autistic traits related to social skills seen in the general population are associated with the 5-HTTLPR genotype, and that this association is mediated by right mPFC function.
Social engagement, pretend play, and concern for another’s distress represent fundamental features of typical social-emotional development in the second year. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display delays and deficits in these areas, and research on toddlers at heightened risk for ASD (HR; younger siblings of children with ASD) indicates these deficits may be apparent in toddlerhood. Prior research has examined these aspects of social-emotional development individually in HR toddlers. The present paper examines them jointly as predictors of ASD. We show that social engagement, pretend play, and empathic concern at 22-months each contribute uniquely to predicting later ASD diagnosis with high specificity and moderate sensitivity. Results have important implications for early diagnosis and intervention in young children with ASD.
This volume represents a burgeoning perspective on the origins of psychopathology, one that focuses on the development of the human central nervous system. The contemporary neurodevelopmental perspective assumes that mental disorders result from etiologic factors that alter the normal course of brain development. Defined here in its broadest sense, neurodevelopment is a process that begins at conception and extends throughout the life span. We now know that it is a complex process, and that its course can be altered by a host of factors, ranging from inherited genetic liabilities to psychosocial stressors. This book features the very best thinking in the converging fields of developmental neuroscience and developmental psychopathology. The developmental window represented is broad, extending from the prenatal period through adulthood, and the authors cover a broad range of etiologic factors and a spectrum of clinical disorders. Moreover, the contributors did not hesitate to use the opportunity to hypothesize about underlying mechanisms and to speculate on research directions.
This is an attempt to explore the nature of the activity in association with the most ancient evidence of music, bone flutes, as well as the nature of the Ice Age cave drawings and paintings with which the bone flutes were discovered and its relationship with the evolution of languages. First, the author reviews evidence for the similarities between characteristics of such drawings and paintings and those produced by individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who have failed to acquire languages unlike neurotypical individuals. Both are extremely realistic when animals are depicted whereas human figures can be only crudely created. Those characteristics are due to the possibility that the creators of the cave art produced animal images by visual realism but human figures by their own knowledge of humans (intelligence realism) as do contemporary individuals with ASD who are impaired with the cognition of interpersonal communication. The discovery of bone flutes in the caves indicates the close association of such space as that suitable to resonate produced sounds with folk culture with rudimentary form of instrumental music. On the basis of recent findings that children with ASD are highly precocious with respect to musical talent, one can reason the production of some sort of landscape music including mimicking of animal vocalizations by using bone flutes in the Ice Age. The author hypothesizes that at that time, caves were used as the audio-visual environments where ancient people, before going to hunting, mitigate their cognitive dissonance by viewing the depicted drawings and paintings, simultaneously exposed to the rudimentary form of music that is known to be effective for the mitigation, created by individuals likely to be with ASD. They can be referred to as neurodivergent from the perspective of the conceptualization of this neurodevelopmental disorder as a manifestation of neurodiversity of humans.
Biomarkers for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are lacking but would facilitate drug development for the core deficits of the disorder. We evaluated markers proposed for characterization of differences in social communication and interaction in adults with ASD versus healthy controls (HC) for utility as biomarkers. Data pooled from an observational study and baseline data from a placebo-controlled study were analyzed. Between-group differences were observed in eye-tracking tasks for activity monitoring, biomotion, human activity preference, composite score (p = 0.0001–0.037) and pupillometry (various tasks, p = 0.017–0.05). Impaired olfaction was more common in the ASD sample versus HC (p = 0.018). Our preliminary results suggest the potential use for stratification and response sub-analyses outcome-prediction of specific eye-tracking tasks, pupillometry and olfaction tests in ASD trials
We investigated the early sociocognitive battery (ESB), a novel measure of preverbal social communication skills, in children with autism participating in the Paediatric Autism Communication Trial-Generalised (PACT-G). The associations between ESB scores, language and autism symptoms were assessed in 249 children aged 2–11 years. The results show that ESB subscale scores (social responsiveness, joint attention and symbolic comprehension) were significantly associated with concurrent autism symptoms and receptive and expressive language levels. The pattern of association between the ESB subscale scores differed between the ADOS-2 symptom domains and expressive and receptive language. These findings indicate the potential utility of the ESB as a measure of preverbal social communication in children with autism.
From an early age children help others yet the underlying mechanisms of children’s prosocial attention remain understudied. Comparing the attentional and physiological mechanisms of prosocial attention of typically developing and atypically developing children contributes to our understanding of the ontogeny of prosocial development. We presented typically developing (TD) children and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), who often have difficulty developing prosocial behaviour, with scenarios in which an adult needed a dropped object to finish a task but was subsequently not helped by a second adult. In a perceptually matched non-social control scenario, children saw self-propelled objects move and drop without any adult present in the scene. Results showed a dissociation between arousal (pupil dilation) and the anticipation of the individual’s need (gaze patterns), such that only TD children looked longer at the correct solution to the adult’s need prior to the resolution of the situation. In contrast, following the resolution of the scene, both groups showed greater arousal when the adult was not helped compared to when the non-social situation remained unresolved. For the ASD group, this effect was greatest for children with higher developmental quotients. These results suggest that, despite similarities in prosocial attention between TD and ASD children, previously documented reduced prosocial behaviour in children with ASD may be in part due to a specific impairment in anticipating prosocial behaviour.
Background
A substantial proportion of preschool children referred to speech and language therapy (SLT) services have social communication difficulties and/or autistic spectrum disorders (SC&/ASD) that are not identified until late childhood. These ‘late’ diagnosed children miss opportunities to benefit from earlier targeted interventions. Prior evidence from a follow‐up clinical sample showed that preschool performance on the Early Sociocognitive Battery (ESB) was a good predictor of children with social communication difficulties 7–8 years later.
Aims
The aims were three‐fold: (1) to determine the impact of child/demographic factors on ESB performance in a community sample of young children; (2) to assess the ESB's concurrent validity and test–retest reliability; and (3) to use cut‐offs for ‘low’ ESB performance derived from the community sample data to evaluate in a clinical sample the predictiveness of the ESB at 2–4 years for outcomes at 9–11 years, including parent‐reported SC&/ASD diagnosis.
Methods & Procedures
A community sample of 205 children aged 2–4 years was assessed on the ESB and a receptive vocabulary test. A subsample (n = 20) was retested on the ESB within 2 weeks. Parents completed a questionnaire providing background child/demographic information. The clinical sample from our previous study comprised 93 children assessed on the ESB at 2;6 to < 4;0 whose parents completed the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), our measure of social communication, when the children were 9–11 years. Cut‐offs for ‘low’ ESB performance derived from the community sample were used to determine the predictive validity of ‘low’ ESB scores for social communication outcomes and parent‐reported SC&/ASD diagnosis according to age of ESB assessment.
Outcome & Results
Findings from the community sample confirmed the ESB as psychometrically robust, sensitive to age and language delay, and, in contrast to the receptive vocabulary measure, unaffected by bilingualism. While overall associations between ESB performance and later social communication difficulties in the clinical sample were particularly strong for the youngest age group (2;6 to < 3;0; r = .71, p < .001), ‘low’ ESB performance was equally predictive across age groups and overall identified 89% of children with ‘late’ SC&/ASD diagnoses (sensitivity), and 75% of those without (specificity).
Conclusions & Implications
Results indicate that the ESB is a valid preschool assessment suitable for use with children from diverse language backgrounds. It identifies deficits in key sociocognitive skills and is predictive of social communication difficulties in school‐age children that had not been identified in preschool clinical assessment, supporting earlier targeted interventions for these children.
Abstract Young autistic children were compared to normal and control samples on measures of nonverbal communication skills and object play skills. Deficits in non-verbal indicating behaviors best discriminated the children diagnosed as autistic from the other groups. Although the autistic children also exhibited deficits in object play behavior, these deficits did not add appreciably to the discriminant function based on the non-verbal communication behaviors. These results suggest that a deficit in the development of non-verbal indicating behaviors is a significant characteristic of young children who receive the diagnosis of autism.
Fifteen children with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) (mean age 12.7 years) were compared to mental age matched normal children on matching a context to its appropriate emotion. PDD children were slightly but significantly impaired on this task relative to a non-social task equated for difficulty. Both matching tasks were highly correlated with cognitive variables; the social matching task alone was correlated with social skill level, and neither task was correlated with ratings of social deviance. Results are discussed in terms of the demands of social cognitive tasks, the magnitude of social cognitive findings, control group selection and individual differences.
Disturbances in the development of joint attention behaviors and the ability to share affect with others are two important components of the social deficits of young autistic children. We examined the association of shared positive affect during two different communicative contexts, joint attention and requesting. The pattern for the normal children was one of frequent positive affect displayed toward the adult during joint attention situations. Compared to the normal children, the autistic children failed to display high levels of positive affect during joint attention whereas the mentally retarded children displayed high levels of positive affect during requesting as well as joint attention situations. These results lend support to the hypothesis that the joint attention deficits in autistic children also are associated with a disturbance in affective sharing.
This study examined autistic children's social behavior, affect, and use of gaze during naturalistic interactions with their mothers. Sixteen autistic children, 30 to 70 months of age, and 16 normal children, matched on receptive language, participated. Children and their mothers were videotaped during three situations: a free-play period, a more structured period during which communicative demand was made on the child, and a face-to-face interaction. In all three situations, autistic and normal children did not differ in the frequency or duration of gaze at mother's face. In the one condition (face-to-face interaction) during which affective expressions were coded, autistic and normal children also were not found to differ significantly in the frequency or duration of smiles displayed, and neither group displayed frowns. However, autistic children were much less likely than normal children to combine their smiles with eye contact in a single act that conveyed communicative intent. Autistic and normal children were not found to differ in the percentages of smiles they displayed to social versus nonsocial events. However, when autistic children's responses to mother's smiles specifically were examined, it was found that they were much less likely to smile in response to mother's smiles than were normal children. Finally, it was found that mothers of autistic children displayed fewer smiles and were less likely to smile in response to their children's smiles, when compared with mothers of normal children. These findings suggest that the autistic child's unusual affective behavior may negatively affect the behavior of others.
We use a new model of metarepresentational development to predict a cognitive deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism. One of the manifestations of a basic metarepresentational capacity is a ‘theory of mind’. We have reason to believe that autistic children lack such a ‘theory’. If this were so, then they would be unable to impute beliefs to others and to predict their behaviour. This hypothesis was tested using Wimmer and Perner's puppet play paradigm. Normal children and those with Down's syndrome were used as controls for a group of autistic children. Even though the mental age of the autistic children was higher than that of the controls, they alone failed to impute beliefs to others. Thus the dysfunction we have postulated and demonstrated is independent of mental retardation and specific to autism.RésuméLes auteurs présentent un nouveau mod`éle de développement méta-cognitif pour prédire le déficit cognitif qui rendrait compte d'un composant essentiel du handicap social de l'enfant autiste. Une des manifestations d'une capacité de base méta-cognitive est une ‘theorie de l'esprit'. Nous avons des raisons de croire que cette théorie fait defaut chez l'enfant autiste. Celui-ci serait done incapable d'attribuer des croyances aux autres ou de prédire leur comportement. Cette hypothèse a été testée avec le paradigme de jeu des marionettes utilisé par Wimmer et Perner. Des enfants normaux et des enfants avec trisomie 21 ont servi de groupe contrôle. Bien que Page mental des enfants autistes ait été plus élevé que deux du groupe contrôle, seuls les enfants autistes Wont pu attribuer aux autres des croyances. Ainsi le dysfonctionnement prévu a pu être démontre, il s'avère indépendant du retard mental et spécifique a l'autiste.
The relationship of gestural joint attention behaviors and the development of effective communication skills in autism and developmental language delay (DLD) was investigated. Autistic and DLD children matched for MA and MLU were compared on measures of gestural joint attention behavior, personal pronoun use, and spontaneous communicative behavior. DLD children responded correctly to joint attention interactions more often than autistic children, and their spontaneous gestural behavior was more communicative and developmentally advanced. Correct production of "I/you" pronouns was related to number of spontaneous initiations for autistic but not for DLD children. Measures of spontaneous joint attention behaviors were in general not related to MA, CA, or MLU for either group. DLD children's performance suggests no special impairment of joint attention skills, whereas autistic children's performance suggests a joint attention deficit in addition to a language deficit.
In previous studies we have found that autistic children were severely impaired in conceptual role taking, that is, in their theory of mind. In this study we consider two possible precursors to this impairment, both of which are early interpersonal abilities. The first is perceptual role taking. A test of this revealed no impairment, ruling it out as related to the impairment in theory of mind. The second is pointing. This was shown to be abnormal, both in comprehension and production, relative to non-autistic controls. In particular, protodeclarative pointing was impaired whilst protoimperative pointing was not. The possibility that impaired protodeclarative pointing may be a precursor to autistic children's impaired theory of mind is discussed.
12-month-old infants were observed responding to 3 stimulus toys: 1 pleasant, 1 ambiguous, and 1 aversive. One-third of the infants (N = 16 in the final analysis) were randomly assigned to each of 3 maternal display conditions. In 1 condition mothers displayed positive affect in face, voice, and gestures; in 1, mothers displayed negative, disgust affect; and in 1, mothers were silent and neutral. After all 3 toys had been presented once, infants in the Mother Positive and Mother Negative conditions were shown the toys again, this time with their mothers silent and neutral. The specificity of effects was examined by comparing infant responses to the stimulus toys with responses to free-play toys. Maternal displays influenced responses only to the stimulus toys as predicted by the social referencing hypothesis. The results also suggested that maternal negative affect displays have a more immediate effect on infant behavior than do positive affect displays. Finally, the data indicated that the infants carried over their appraisals to the second presentation of the toys even though their mothers ceased delivering the affectively toned messages.
Abstract The social interactions of young autistic children and their caregivers were contrasted to interactions involving normal and mentally retarded controls. The autistic children displayed a much lower frequency of attention sharing behaviors, such as pointing to or showing objects. Alternatively, the autistic children directed as much looking, vocalizing and proximity behaviors toward their caregivers as did the other groups. Thus, although the autistic children did not show a clear lack of responsiveness to their caregivers, they did display a significant deficit in indicating behaviors during child-caregiver interaction.
Autistic children, pair matched on chronological and verbal mental age with control children, were given Hobson's task of recognition of emotions and Baron-Cohen's False Belief tasks to assess the replicability of their findings of deficits in understanding of feeling and mental states in autism. There were no group differences on the emotion tasks and performance was related to chronological and verbal mental age. An autism specific deficit was shown in only one of the false belief conditions and again performance was related to verbal comprehension ability. There was some consistency within the group in responses across the two kinds of tasks. Parent reported social behaviour and experience in the autistic children was only weakly related to the ability to pass the tasks. It is argued that the results reflect developmental factors and that claims for an autism specific problem in these kinds of social/cognitive processing may need further exploration.
Expression of emotion was examined in a group of 10 preschool‐aged autistic children and a control group of 10 developmentally delayed children matched for chronological and mental age. Each child was videotaped for 15 minutes of interaction with the mother, a child psychiatrist, and the nursery school teacher. Affective expression was recorded using a behavior checklist. The autistic children were found to display less positive affect that the delayed children (p < 0.01). In addition, the positive affect displayed by the autistic children was less likely to be partner‐related and more likely to be related to self‐absorbed activity than was the case with the delayed children (p < 0.001). The groups were not found to differ in the frequency of negative affect.
High-functioning autistic adults were compared with normal adults using a battery of tests devised to assess the recognition and expression of emotional cues in both facial and vocal modalities. The autistic subjects were relatively impaired in both the appreciation and production of emotional expressions. Although no one test provided a clear-cut separation of the groups at the individual level, composite scores did separate the groups quite well. It is suggested that this battery of tasks may have some value in family genetic studies of autism that need to identify subclinical deficits that might be aetiologically linked with autism.
26 autistic children with mental ages of 3-13 years were tested on 3 tasks that are within the capability of 3- or 4-year-old normal children. The first task tested understanding of a mistaken belief. Children were shown a typical box of a certain brand of sweets, and they all thought that it contained that kind of sweet. To their surprise, however, the box contained something else. Yet, only 4 out of the 26 autistic children were able to anticipate that another child in the same situation would make the same mistake. In contrast, all but 1 of 12 children with specific language impairment, matched for mental age, understood that others would be as misled as they had been themselves. The autistic children were also tested for their ability to infer knowledge about the content of a container from having or not having looked inside. All 4 children who had passed the belief task and an additional 4 performed perfectly, but most failed. The third task assessed children's pragmatic ability to adjust their answers to provide new rather than repeat old information. Here, too, most autistic children seemed unable to reliably make the correct adjustment. These results confirm the hypothesis that autistic children have profound difficulty in taking account of mental states.
This study examined the facial affect expressions of autistic, mentally retarded and normal children. Affect was coded using the Maximally Discriminative Movement Coding System. Results indicated that the autistic children were more flat/neutral in their affect expression than the mentally retarded children. Moreover, they displayed a variety of ambiguous expressions not displayed by any of the other children. This unique pattern may be related to the difficulties that autistic children have in sharing affect, and to the difficulties that others experience in reading their affective signals.
The development of social referencing in 40 infants aged 6-9, 10-13, and 14-22 months was investigated in this study. Social referencing was defined broadly to include children's looks toward parents, their instrumental toy behaviors, affective expressions, and other behaviors toward parents. Children's looks at parents were more selective with increasing age, with older infants preferring to look directly at their parents' faces and younger infants showing no preference for looks to faces over looks elsewhere at the parent. Younger infants looked most often when their parents expressed positive affect, whereas older infants looked most often when parents displayed fearful reactions toward a stimulus. Evidence of a behavioral regulatory effect on instrumental toy behaviors was found only among infants 10-13 months of age. However, only infants older than 14 months of age inhibited touching the toy until after referencing the parent. On some measures these older infants showed a preference for toys associated with fearful messages. Affective expressions were in line with positive and negative behavior toward toys. No support for mood modification or simple imitation as explanations for the effects was found. Results indicated that the looking behavior of younger children may function differently than that of older children, and that social referencing involves a number of component skills that develop during the end of the first year and throughout the second year of life.
The study was designed to provide a descriptive analysis of the frequency and patterning of social referencing in a seminaturalistic setting. 32 infants, half of them 12 and half 18 months old, were observed exploring a caged rabbit with their mothers present. Referencing was operationalized as looks directed toward the mother following a look to the rabbit, accompanied by quizzical facial or vocal expressions. As a function of initial reaction to the rabbit, the infants were classified as wary or bold. Wary infants were more likely to reference their mothers when the rabbit was first presented; however, as the exploration period progressed, bold and wary infants referenced equally often. Referencing occurred less often than affective sharing; it increased in frequency when the mother was instructed to actively offer information and the infant no longer needed to solicit information by looking at her. Mothers directed both affective and instrumental information to their infants, providing affective information through facial expressions and tone of voice, and emphasizing instrumental information in the semantic content of their vocalizations.
Five children with autism and one with dysphasia were studied using a pragmatic measure of dyadic interpretation formerly used only in normal populations. It was shown that such a measure could be used to describe the interactive behavior of deviant children in a reliable and valid way. Mothers of these children are, by and large, less able to set up successful dialogues because they frequently redirect them. After a nursery program of 5 to 8 months, mothers became less asynchronous and approximated a teacher’s success in synchronous dialogue. Autistic children’s development can be enhanced by better interaction with their adult environment. This study demonstrates how this new application of a method can measure such changes. © 1987 by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Groups of MA-matched autistic, normal and non-autistic retarded children were tested for their ability to choose drawn and photographed facial expressions of emotion to "go with" a person videotaped in gestures, vocalizations and contexts indicative of four emotional states. Although both autistic and control subjects were adept in choosing drawings of non-personal objects to correspond with videotaped cues, the autistic children were markedly impaired in selecting the appropriate faces for the videotaped expressions and contexts. Within the autistic group, the children's performance in this task of emotion recognition was related to MA. It is suggested that autistic children have difficulty in recognizing how different expressions of particular emotions are associated with each other, and that this might contribute to their failure to understand the emotional states of other people.
The social behaviors of 14 autistic children and 14 normal children of equivalent mental age were observed during a free-play situation as well as during separation from and reunion with their mothers and a stranger. As a group, the autistic children showed evidence of attachment to their mothers, directing more social behaviors and more physical contact to their caregivers than to the stranger during the reunion episodes. Within the autistic group, the children who showed an increase in attachment behaviors in response to separation and reunion demonstrated more advanced symbolic play skills than those autistic children who showed no change in attachment behaviors. One possible explanation may be that autistic children require more advanced levels of symbolic ability to form attachments to others than is necessary for the development of attachments in normal children.