Perception of Cry Characteristics in 1-Month-Old Infants Later Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
M Samantha English, Elena J Tenenbaum, Todd P Levine and 2 others
PMID 30361941WHAT IT FOUND
Mothers rated four one-month-old cries from infants later diagnosed with autism as more distressing, less typical, and more painful than matched control cries.
Parent group did not change ratings. Only four autism cries were studied, so this is not a screening tool.
Key findings
01Mothers rated cries from infants later diagnosed with ASD as more distressing than cries from infants without ASD.
02Mothers rated ASD cries as less typical and more painful than non-ASD cries.
03Mothers of children with ASD did not rate the cries differently from mothers of children with typical development.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used only eight cry samples in total, four from infants with later ASD and four from matched controls, so the findings may not represent the wider ASD population. All infants whose cries were used were male, and all raters were mothers, so the results do not address female infants or fathers. The parents who rated the cries were not caring for infants at the time, which limits conclusions about real-time caregiver responses. The study did not show which acoustic features made the ASD cries sound different. Parent groups differed in highest school grade completed, with more parents of TD children having college or higher education. Only four infants with later ASD diagnoses contributed cries, and their diagnoses were confirmed retrospectively at ages 8 to 16 years.
Declared interests
Samantha English and Elena J. Tenenbaum declared no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the cry ratings as evidence that a one-month-old infant can be identified as likely to have ASD. The study used only four ASD cries, all from male infants, and did not identify the acoustic features behind the ratings.