Abstract
Infants with an older sibling diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a twentyfold increase in risk of developing ASD. Deficits in gesture use are among the first signs of impairment in infants later diagnosed with ASD. Typically, infants develop gestures incidentally in the context of social interactions with their parents. However, infants at risk for ASD may not acquire gestures within these natural interactions. The first purpose of this research was to determine whether infants at high risk for ASD show patterns of communicative and play gestures that are delayed and/or different relative to low-risk infants. The second purpose was to compare mothers of infants at risk for ASD with mothers of infants at low risk for ASD in their use of gestures, gesture strategies, and prompts.
Seventeen 15-month-old infant-mother dyads were recruited from a longitudinal study of the emergence of autism symptoms in infants with an older sibling with ASD (high risk for ASD, n = 8; low risk for ASD, n = 9). Infant gestures were examined in three contexts: during clinical assessment, during naturalistic play with their mothers, and by parent report. Maternal gestures and gesture-related behaviours were recorded during the play interaction. Infant and maternal gesture behaviours were later coded from video.
High-risk infants showed different patterns of gesture use relative to low-risk infants. In clinic and home contexts, high-risk infants: (a) used gestures that were not directed to a communicative partner more often than low-risk infants, and (b) showed specific deficits in the use of deictic and joint attention gestures. In addition, high-risk infants: (a) demonstrated fewer symbolic play acts at home, and (b) had a smaller inventory of communicative and play gestures by parent report. Mothers of high-risk infants used more play gestures, but were otherwise no different in their gesture behaviours from mothers of low-risk infants. This research demonstrated that, at 15 months of age infants at risk for ASD showed delays and differences in gesture use despite receiving typical gestural input from their mothers. The patterns of these deficits may be important in early identification and could inform intervention practices.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/43668 |
| Date | 13 January 2014 |
| Creators | Mitchell, Shelley |
| Contributors | Girolametto, Luigi |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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