Atypical Development of Attentional Control Associates with Later Adaptive Functioning, Autism and ADHD Traits.

All early attention data came from parent report, which may be influenced by recall, expectations, or the parent’s own attention difficulties. Parents of infants with a family history of autism may interpret attention items differently because they already have an older child with autism. Some associations between attention scores and later autism or ADHD scores could reflect a negative halo effect, where one reported difficulty makes other difficulties seem more likely. At the time of analysis, clinical reviews were complete for 97% of Sample 1 EL infants but only 51% of Sample 2 EL infants, and age-3 outcomes were available for 42-56% of Sample 2. The number of attention classes differed between samples, and the low focus, high shifting class was mostly specific to the Swedish cohort. The study shows association over time, not that attentional control caused autism, ADHD, or adaptive functioning difficulties. The sample was enriched for family history of autism, so the results may not apply to children diagnosed in the community without family history, genetic conditions, or non-WEIRD countries.

The paper lists public research councils, universities, charities, and fellowship funders, including the H2020 European Research Council, Research Foundation Flanders, Universiteit Gent, Marguerite-Marie Delacroix, Medical Research Council, Autistica, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, K.F. Hein Fonds, Economic and Social Research Council, Scott Family Junior Research Fellowship, Wellcome Trust, and King’s College London (GB). No author conflict-of-interest statement is provided in the supplied text.

Do not use this attention profile to diagnose autism or ADHD in an individual child. The plateaued pattern was found in only 7-9% of samples, was based on parent report, and most infants later diagnosed with autism showed typical attention development.