Resistance to temptation in toddlers at genetic risk for autism spectrum disorder.
Susan B Campbell, Jessie B Northrup, Amy B Tavares
PMID 30165745WHAT IT FOUND
Toddlers later diagnosed with autism showed less ability to resist touching a forbidden toy.
At 28 months none of them resisted, while about 40% of other toddlers did; at 34 months 20% resisted, versus 73% low-risk and 64% high-risk-no-diagnosis toddlers.
Key findings
01At 28 months, none of the toddlers with an ASD diagnosis resisted touching the forbidden toy, while about 40% of low-risk and high-risk-no-ASD toddlers did.
02At 34 months, 73% of low-risk and 64% of high-risk-no-ASD toddlers resisted touching the toy, compared with 20% of toddlers with ASD.
03After language scores were controlled, group differences in touching the toy were no longer significant at 28 months, but the ASD group remained significantly more likely than the low-risk group to touch at 34 months.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The ASD group was small at each age, so the findings may not be stable in larger groups. Not all children completed the task at every age, and some children were excluded because they showed no interest in the toy. The authors could not directly test developmental change over time because the data were highly skewed and they used cross-sectional analyses. Verbal ability differed between groups and partly accounted for some results, so it is hard to separate language effects from self-regulation effects. The sample was mostly Caucasian, non-Hispanic, and from two-parent families. The task was a short laboratory delay with one toy, not a real-world measure of everyday behavior.
Declared interests
The supplied metadata lists NIH extramural research support. The article text does not include a separate conflict-of-interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this task as a diagnostic test for autism or as proof that poor self-regulation causes ASD. The groups did not differ at 22 months, the ASD group was small, and language scores partly explained some differences.