Symptoms of pervasive developmental disorders as observed in prediagnostic home videos of infants and toddlers

Screening for Autism Spectrum Disorders in Flemish Day-Care Centres with the Checklist for Early Signs of Developmental Disorders

“…Items regarding joint attention were also found to be highly discriminative in other screening instruments such as the M-CHAT (Robins et al, 2001). Moreover, home video studies found joint attention to be one of the most important early signs of ASD in infants or toddlers (Mars et al, 1998;Maestro et al, 2001). "Lack of symbolic play" also had a high discriminative power.…”

“…We performed a literature review on retrospective, prospective and home movie research on red flags of ASD in infants and toddlers (Adrien et al, 1991(Adrien et al, , 1993Baranek, 1999;Eaves & Ho, 2004;Gillberg et al, 1990;Gray & Tonge, 2001;Lord, 1995;Mars, Mauk, & Dorwick, 1998;Maestro, Casella, Milone, Muratori, & Palacio-Espasa, 1999;Maestro et al, 2001;Osterling & Dawson, 1994;Osterling, Dawson, & Munson, 2002;Werner, Dawson, Osterling, & Dinno, 2000;Wetherby et al, 2004;Wimpory, Hobson, Williams, & Nash, 2000;Zwaigenbaum et al, 2005). Unpublished findings of home movie research of our own research group were also included.…”

Rate of Head Growth Decelerates and Symptoms Worsen in the Second Year of Life in Autism

“…When gaze was combined with the behaviors of showing, pointing, and orienting to name (i.e., social orienting), 91% of the infants with typical development and autism were correctly classified. These results were replicated by Mars et al (1998) who used blind scoring to evaluate home videotapes of first birthday parties of 25 infants later diagnosed with autism and 25 typically developing infants. Again, the variable "looks at faces" was found to be a powerful discriminator between the two groups, as well as joint attention (e.g., pointing) behaviors.…”

“…Retrospective studies of home videotapes have allowed investigators to observe the early social, language, motor, and play behaviors of infants who later receive a diagnosis of autism and to examine developmental differences between infants later diagnosed with autism and typically developing infants (Mars et al 1998;Osterling and Dawson 1994) and infants later diagnosed with mental retardation (Baranek 1999;Osterling, Dawson, Munson 2002). In one such study, Osterling and Dawson (1994) examined videotapes of first birthday parties and demonstrated that 1-year-olds later diagnosed with autism could be distinguished from 1-year-old typically developing infants.…”

Immunization and children at risk for autism

“…Because neurological investigation reveals no organic etiology, the temporal association with immunization suggests to some parents that vaccination must be causally linked. Although home video reviews and current studies of infants who have an older sibling with autism suggest that differences exist in the first year of life, most parents do not detect differences in their child until the second year (6,7).…”