Gaze to faces across interactive contexts in infants at heightened risk for autism.
Devon N Gangi, A J Schwichtenberg, Ana-Maria Iosif and 3 others
PMID 28683562WHAT IT FOUND
Gaze to an examiner during structured testing was associated with gaze to a parent during play at 9 and 12 months, not at 6 months.
Infants with later ASD did not show the higher parent-play gaze seen in non-ASD siblings.
Key findings
01Examiner gaze during structured Mullen testing was associated with parent-play gaze at 9 months (β = 0.34, p < .001) and 12 months (β = 0.46, p < .01), but not significantly at 6 months (β = 0.25, p = .08).
02Outcome group status did not significantly affect the regression models at any age.
03At 12 months, non-ASD siblings showed higher gaze during parent play than during examiner testing, while the ASD group did not differ between contexts.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The ASD group had only 17 infants, so the group-specific context pattern at 12 months is not stable evidence. Not all infants had data at every age, because some were enrolled late or were fatigued or noncompliant. The parent-play and examiner-testing contexts differed in both the activity and the partner, so the study cannot separate the effect of the partner from the effect of the activity. The analysis did not test developmental change over time, so it cannot say how consistency with age evolves. The 6-month association did not reach significance (p = .08). Outcome group variables were not significant in the regression models, so the study does not show that diagnostic status changes the examiner-parent gaze link.
Declared interests
The paper lists NIH extramural research support. The supplied text does not report author conflicts.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that reduced gaze to an examiner diagnoses autism. The significant results were associations between examiner and parent gaze, and outcome group variables were not significant in the models.