Social complexity and the early social environment affect visual social attention to faces.
Tawny Tsang, Scott Johnson, Shafali Jeste and 1 others
PMID 30632286WHAT IT FOUND
High-risk and low-risk infants did not differ overall in looking at faces.
In the simple cartoon clip, higher parental autism-related traits were linked to slower increases in face-looking. More face-looking tracked lower later social symptoms in high-risk infants.
Key findings
01High-risk and low-risk infants did not differ in overall attention to faces.
02In the simpler cartoon clip, higher parental autism-related traits were associated with slower developmental increases in attention to faces; no such association appeared in the complex live-action clip.
03Greater attention to faces was associated with lower social symptom severity, and the association remained significant in high-risk infants.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This was an observational study, so it cannot show that changing parental autism-related traits or increasing face-looking causes better social communication. Only 23 high-risk infants had diagnostic outcomes available, and the high-risk group included infants later diagnosed with autism, other developmental concerns, speech and language delays, or typical development, so the groups were not uniform. Several infants were excluded when eye-tracking data were poor, and the parental-trait finding in the cartoon clip was examined after the main analysis, so it may be less reliable. The associations between face-looking and social competence were small-to-moderate, so face-looking is only one part of social communication. The study used videos of cartoons and television scenes, not real caregiver-child interactions, so findings may not translate directly to everyday social behavior.
Declared interests
The article text identifies NIH/NICHD support (P50 HD055784). No commercial funding or author conflicts are stated in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that high risk for autism causes reduced face looking or that increasing face looking will reduce later social symptoms. The high-risk and low-risk groups did not differ in overall attention to faces, and the links with parental traits and social symptoms were associations, not tested interventions.