Infants at risk of autism and developmental disorders: Establishing early social skills.

Abstract

In the present paper we discuss early markers of infants and children at risk of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other developmental disorders, and review studies that use operant contingencies to shape critical social skills in both typically and atypically developing infants. We emphasize the use of operant learning models to facilitate the early acquisition of infant social skills including eye contact, joint attention, vocal responding, and social referencing. We discuss research that has shown how specific contingencies of reinforcement can be implemented by caregivers to promote the development of their infants’ social behaviors. The assumption is that by strengthening these early social repertoires, the severity of subsequent developmental problems can be lessened or mitigated in those infants who are identified as at risk.

Individualizing Intervention to Teach Joint Attention, Requesting, and Social Referencing to Children with Autism

“…Challenges in early social communication skills including JA, SR, and eye contact are considered to be discriminative characteristics of infants and young children with and at risk of being diagnosed with ASD (Neimy, Pelaez, Carrow, Monlux, & Tarbox, 2017). Younger siblings of a child diagnosed with ASD who later go on to receive a diagnosis of ASD show deficits in many of these early social communication skills, including the response topographies of eye contact, disengagement of visual attention, and shifting gaze (Zwaigenbaum et al, 2005).…”

“…A large literature suggests that there are documented effective behavioral intervention procedures to improve early social communication skills in young children with ASD (e.g., Hansen, Carnett, & Tullis, 2018;Murza, Schwartz, Hahs-Vaughn, & Nye, 2016;White et al, 2011) and even those at risk (Neimy et al, 2017). In many of these studies, the authors use the same intervention procedures for all participants.…”

Acceptability of the Transitional Wearable Companion “+me” in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Comparative Pilot Study

“…The onset of symptoms typically occurs by the age of 3 years, although they may not fully manifest until school age (Lyall et al, 2017), while the average age of a child receiving a formal ASD diagnosis is around the age of 5 years (Shattuck et al, 2009;Jónsdóttir et al, 2011;Zuckerman et al, 2015;Neimy et al, 2017). This notwithstanding, recent studies suggest that behavioral warning signs, such as atypical orienting to people, reduced eye contact, lack of response to name, and lack of social or emotional reciprocity-all pivotal precursors of the complex cognitive construct of Social Cognition (Happé and Frith, 2014;Pino et al, 2017)-can already emerge within the first 2 years of life (Ozonoff et al, 2010;Zwaigenbaum et al, 2013;Jones et al, 2014).…”

“…Early diagnosis is crucial. In this respect, several studies show how, on average, early rehabilitative interventions appear to be effective for toddlers with ASD (Bryson et al, 2003;Dawson et al, 2010;Reichow, 2012;Dawson, 2013;Neimy et al, 2017), both improving functional behavior and reducing the overall severity of the condition (Rogers, 1998). The effectiveness of early treatment is probably due to brain plasticity, namely the capacity of the central nervous system to modify both its function and structure in response to experience (Dawson, 2008;Calderoni et al, 2016;Izadi-Najafabadi et al, 2019), which presents maximal responsiveness in the critical period of childhood (Inguaggiato et al, 2017).…”

Acceptability of the Transitional Wearable Companion “+me” in Typical Children: A Pilot Study

“…Symptoms are usually detected in early infancy, generally around 3 years of age. However, warning signals can be detected already in the first year of life (Neimy et al, 2017) as nonresponsiveness to name, lack of spontaneous imitation, infrequent vocalizations and babbling, overfocus and perseveration on objects instead of people, minimal social smiles, or facial expressions, little or no eye contact and visual tracking, limited joint attention and social referencing, and minimal play and exploratory skills. Epidemiological data collected in several developed countries show a dramatic increase of ASD cases, from 0.7 to 1.4% of the population, in the last decades (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014; Lyall et al, 2017).…”