What do home videos tell us about early motor and socio-communicative behaviours in children with autistic features during the second year of life — An exploratory study

Abstract

Background-Little is known about the first half year of life of individuals later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). There is even a complete lack of observations on the first 6 months of life of individuals with transient autistic behaviours who improved in their sociocommunicative functions in the pre-school age.Aim-To compare early development of individuals with transient autistic behaviours and those later diagnosed with ASD.Study design-Exploratory study; retrospective home video analysis.Subjects-18 males, videoed between birth and the age of 6 months (ten individuals later diagnosed with ASD; eight individuals who lost their autistic behaviours after the age of 3 and achieved age-adequate communicative abilities, albeit often accompanied by tics and attention deficit).Method-The detailed video analysis focused on general movements (GMs), the concurrent motor repertoire, eye contact, responsive smiling, and pre-speech vocalisations.Results-Abnormal GMs were observed more frequently in infants later diagnosed with ASD, whereas all but one infant with transient autistic behaviours had normal GMs (p < 0.05). Eye contact and responsive smiling were inconspicuous for all individuals. Cooing was not observable in six individuals across both groups. Conclusions-GMs might be one of the markers which could assist the earlier identification of ASD. We recommend to implement the GM assessment in prospective studies on ASD.

Fidgety movements – tiny in appearance, but huge in impact

“…The answer is yes; in rare cases, FMs do not preclude an adverse outcome. Mild, usually unilateral CP 6,15,32 and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) 22,28 were reported in high-risk infants who had shown normal FMs. As a rule, however, normal FMs along with a smooth concurrent motor performance indicate a normal neurological outcome.…”

A Novel Way to Measure and Predict Development: A Heuristic Approach to Facilitate the Early Detection of Neurodevelopmental Disorders

“…Specifically, the absence of fidgety movements (at 3–5 months) is typically associated with the development of cerebral palsy [37, 41, 42]. In addition to its application in infants with perinatal brain injury, the general movement assessment (GMA) has also been applied to—for example—intrauterine HIV-exposed and/or HIV-infected newborns and young infants [43], infants of mothers with ZIKV infection [44], infants with metabolic disorders [45], infants with genetic disorders [46–49] and infants with ASD [50•, 51]. …”

“…As previously mentioned, there are a number of conditions with no apparent physical features at birth (e.g. ASD, FXS, RTT) and it is only during later development that they reach a saliency threshold leading to a characteristic appearance which contributes to accurate diagnosis [48, 51, 70, 73–76]. When dealing with COI, such as ASD, FXS or RTT for example [73, 77, 78], a formal diagnosis is often given at or beyond toddlerhood.…”

What can autism teach us about the role of sensorimotor systems in higher cognition? New clues from studies on language, action semantics, and abstract emotional concept processing

“…Other reports of the earliest emerging autistic symptoms, although they do not specify whether they discuss autism with or without regression, do indeed note motor dysfunction within the first 12 months (Guinchat et al, 2012;Young, Brewer, & Pattison, 2003). 6 Aside from milestones, abnormalities in lying (Esposito, Venuti, Maestro, & Muratori, 2009) have been reported in autistic infants, as have unusual posturing (Baranek, 1999) and differences or reductions in general spontaneous movement (Phagava et al, 2008;Zappella et al, 2015). Abnormalities in the writhing, fidgety movements that typically emerge in early life are symptomatic of minor or major neurological deficits (Einspieler et al, 2014).…”