Action prediction in 10-month-old infants at high and low familial risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Background: Several studies have reported action prediction difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Although action prediction develops in infancy, little is known about prediction abilities in infants at risk for ASD. Methods: Using eye tracking, we measured action anticipations in 52 10-month-old infants at high and low familial risk for ASD. Infants were repeatedly presented with actions during which a familiar object (cup/phone) was either brought to a location usually associated with the object (cup-to-mouth/phone-to-ear; usual condition) or to an unusual location (cup-toear/phone-to-mouth; unusual condition). We assessed infants' anticipations to the actual target location (i.e., the location where the object was actually brought; the mouth in cup-tomouth/phone-to-mouth actions; the ear in cup-to-ear/phone-to-ear actions) and the alternative target location (the ear in cup-to-mouth/phone-to-mouth actions; the mouth in cup-to-ear/phone-to-ear actions). Results: Anticipation frequencies were modulated by object knowledge across all infants: We found more frequent anticipations towards the alternative target location for unusual compared to usual actions. This effect was in particular present for mouth anticipations which were also overall more frequent than ear anticipations. Across usual and unusual actions, infants showed more frequent anticipations towards the actual target location, potentially representing a learning effect elicited by the repeated action presentation. Importantly, there were no differences between the low-and high-risk infants in predictive eye movements. Conclusion: Whereas our results suggest that familial risk for ASD does not affect action prediction in infancy, future research needs to investigate whether differences are apparent in those high-risk infants who later receive a diagnosis.

Prediction in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence

“…The ASD group showed reduced modulation of neural activity by prediction, but only when the sounds pairings were action‐related and not for natural sounds. Braukmann et al [2018] studied predictions based on the association between objects and body parts (e.g., phone and ear) learned by infants based on their short experiential corpus. They found no differences in predictive gaze.…”

“…Eight of these studies measured anticipatory eye movement as an indicator of prediction [Barzy et al, 2019; Braukmann et al, 2018; Ego et al, 2016; Ganglmayer et al, 2020; Greene et al, 2019; Krogh‐Jespersen et al, 2018; Schuwerk et al, 2016; Vivanti et al, 2018]. While two studies found no differences in predictive eye movements (i.e., equal amounts of predictive saccades based on common action/body part associations [Braukmann et al, 2018] and comparable predictive tracking of a moving object through occlusion [Ego et al, 2016]), the remaining six found fewer predictive eye movements in ASD based on learned [Schuwerk et al, 2016] or instructed [Greene et al, 2019] statistical tendencies. Anticipatory saccades in ASD participants were either executed with a greater delay after the predictive cue [Barzy et al, 2019] or not similarly informed by the inferred goals of agents in the scene [Ganglmayer et al, 2020; Krogh‐Jespersen et al, 2018].…”

Autistic Traits Differently Account for Context-Based Predictions of Physical and Social Events

“…Several studies have provided evidence of altered perception of the world in individuals with autism [56][57][58][59][60] and in typically-developing individuals with high autistic traits [61][62][63].…”

Autistic traits are associated with atypical precision-weighted integration of top-down and bottom-up neural signals

“…Similarly, the social difficulties which are a defining feature of autism may emerge as a result of the difficulty in dealing with the inherent ambiguity of social cues (Lawson et al, 2014). However, direct empirical tests of this account have provided mixed findings; while some data support the idea of a decreased influence of predictions on perception and behaviour in autistic individuals and people reporting high levels of autistic traits (Balsters et al, 2017;Ewing, Pellicano & Rhodes, 2013;Goris et al, 2018;Lawson, Mathys, & Rees, 2017;Pellicano, Jeffrey, Burr & Rhodes, 2007;Skewes, Jegindo, Gebauer, 2014;Turi et al, 2015), other studies find no differences as a function of autism/autistic traits (Braukmann et al, 2018;Cook, Brewer, Shah & Bird, 2014;Ego et al, 2016;Karvelis, Seitz, Lawrie & Seriès, 2018;Lieder et al, 2019;Manning, Kilner, Neil, Karaminis, & Pellicano, 2017;Pell et al, 2016;Tewolde, Bishop, & Manning, 2018).…”