Hyper-Reactivity to Salience Limits Social Interaction Among Infants Born Pre-term and Infant Siblings of Children With ASD.

ABSTRACT: The ability to engage attention with selected stimuli is essential for infants to explore the world and process information relating to their surroundings. There are two main populations with a higher risk to develop attentional and social deficits whose deficits may arise from difficulties in regulating attention to salient cues: (1) siblings of children diagnosed with Autism; and (2) infants who were born pre-term. This study investigated infants' (N = 97) attention-engagement and pupil-dilation (PD) at 9 months of age, using a gaze-contingent paradigm and a structured social interaction. Specifically, we explored attention to stimuli with simple salient features (e.g., clear defined shapes, colors, and motions) vs. more complex non-social cues (amorphous shapes, colors, and motio

SUBMITTER: Zivan M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8160104 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature