Early Motor Development Predicts Clinical Outcomes of Siblings at High-Risk for Autism: Insight from an Innovative Motion-Tracking Technology

Caruso, Angela; Gila, Letizia; Fulceri, Francesca; Salvitti, Tommaso; Micai, Martina; Baccinelli, Walter; Bulgheroni, Maria; Scattoni, María Luisa

doi:10.3390/brainsci10060379

Cited by 20 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 75 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The authors found that HR infants later diagnosed with NDD presented higher general motor activity associated with lower variability and velocity, as well as higher acceleration of global movement in the space. Furthermore, these infants showed patterns of higher periodicity of limbs, particularly the upper ones, during the first 12 weeks of life [ 48 ]. Wilson et al utilized in a longitudinal study Opal wearable sensors to assess full day motor activity in five HR infants at 3, 6, 9, 12 months of life, thus obtaining a motion complexity measure.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Motor Signs in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Posar

Visconti

2022

Children

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A growing number of literature data suggest the presence of early impairments in the motor development of children with autism spectrum disorder, which could be often recognized even before the appearance of the classical social communication deficits of autism. In this narrative review, we aimed at performing an update about the available data on the early motor function in children with autism spectrum disorder. Early motor impairment in these children can manifest itself both as a mere delay of motor development and as the presence of atypicalities of motor function, such as a higher rate and a larger inventory, of stereotyped movements both with and without objects. In the perspective of a timely diagnosis, the presence of early motor signs can be an important clue, especially in an individual considered at high risk for autism. Motor and communication (both verbal and non-verbal) skills are connected and a pathogenetic role of early motor dysfunctions in the development of autism can be hypothesized. From this, derives the importance of an early enabling intervention aimed at improving motor skills, which could also have favorable effects on other aspects of development.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Motor Signs in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Posar

Visconti

2022

Children

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In this scenario, ASD would emerge not as a higher-order social-cognitive deficit, but because of an impairment of the primordial ability to process low level sensory, motor and perceptual information gained through experience with other people since the earliest periods of life [29]. This idea may also be sustained by several studies that reported the presence of early sensorimotor signs in infants/young children with, or at risk of, ASD [30][31][32], and also the presence of a relationship between early motor delay and later communication delay in infants at risk for ASD [33,34]. Unlike the comparison group, the ASD children appeared more likely to have abnormalities across multiple sensory domains, whereas most of the comparison group children had weaker abnormal sensory features.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Behavioural Differences in Sensorimotor Profiles: A Comparison of Preschool-Aged Children with Sensory Processing Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorders

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sensory Processing Disorders (SPDs) define dysfunctions in modulating, organising, and using information from several sensory channels for regulating motor, behavioural, emotional and attention responses. Although SPD can be identified also as an isolated condition in young children, its presence in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) population is really frequent. The study purpose is to explore the SPD clinical expression and the putative correlation with several behavioural aspects both in children with ASD and in those with isolated SPD. Therefore, 43 preschool-aged children (25 ASD vs. 18 SPD) were recruited, and their parents completed three questionnaires (Developmental Profile-3, Sensory Processing Measure–Preschool, Repetitive Behaviour Scale-Revised) to evaluate behavioural alterations and developmental levels. The main result is that both ASD and SPD groups had significantly sensory-related behavioural symptoms, although ASD children seem to be more impaired in all areas. Several significant correlations were found between sensory processing difficulties and repetitive behaviours, but in the SPD group a specific relationship between Body Awareness and Ritualistic/Sameness Behaviour was found. Conversely, in the ASD group, more diffuse interlinks between sensory processing difficulties and motor behaviours were significant. In conclusion, the present study confirms the key role of sensory–motor skills in early diagnosis and intervention among children at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders.

show abstract

“…Since the model including Mullen scores did not explain the data better than the model without this predictor, we do not see evidence that differences in noise in the sensory and motor systems between the two groups influenced their performance on the task. This could be more directly analyzed in future studies by recording motion tracking during the task, a method which has recently shown interesting insights into the development of autism and neurodevelopmental disorders (Achermann et al., 2020 ; Caruso et al., 2020 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit learning in 3‐year‐olds with high and low likelihood of autism shows no evidence of precision weighting differences

Ward

Buitelaar

Hunnius

2021

Developmental Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Predictive Processing accounts of autism claim that autistic individuals assign higher precision to their prediction errors than non-autistic individuals, that is, autistic individuals update their predictions more readily when faced with unexpected sensory input. Since setting the level of precision is a fundamental part of perception and learning, we propose that such differences should be detectable in various domains at a very early age, before clinical symptoms have fully emerged. We therefore tested 3-year-old younger siblings of autistic children, with a high likelihood of later receiving an autism diagnosis themselves, and low-likelihood children with an older sibling without autism.We used a novel implicit learning paradigm to examine the effect of sensory noise on the predictions participants built. In order to learn a sequence, our participants had to select which visual information to attend to and disregard low-level prediction errors caused by the sensory noise, which the theory claims is more difficult for autistic individuals. Contrary to the proposed higher precision-weighting of prediction errors in autism, the high-likelihood children did not show signs of updating their predictions more readily when we added sensory noise compared to the low-likelihood children, either in their reaction times or in the recurrence and determinism of their response locations. These results raise challenges for Predictive Processing theories of autism, specifically for the notion that prediction errors are inflexibly highly weighted by individuals with autism.

show abstract

Early Motor Development Predicts Clinical Outcomes of Siblings at High-Risk for Autism: Insight from an Innovative Motion-Tracking Technology

Cited by 20 publications

References 75 publications

Early Motor Signs in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Early Motor Signs in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Behavioural Differences in Sensorimotor Profiles: A Comparison of Preschool-Aged Children with Sensory Processing Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorders

Implicit learning in 3‐year‐olds with high and low likelihood of autism shows no evidence of precision weighting differences

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About