Study finds autism
signs in infant videos
10/14/2002
By KAREN
PATTERSON / The Dallas Morning News
Autism may begin to reveal itself in social interaction even in
the first six months of life, a new study focusing on family videos
suggests.
Detecting autism early is important, the study's authors say,
because treatments might be devised to influence a youngster's
development, perhaps lessening the long-term consequences of the
condition.
Currently, parents may not recognize subtle signs of autism in an
infant – or they may overlook or deny them. "Given such factors,"
the researchers note, "we may refer, at present, more correctly to
age of recognition rather than onset" of the autism.
The scientists, led by Sandra Maestro at the University of Pisa
in Italy, examined 15 children who had been diagnosed with autism or
another developmental disorder between 3 and 6 years of age. Those
children were put through a five-day assessment program. All were
found to meet psychiatric standards for autism; most had low or
borderline IQs. The researchers also studied a similar group of
children without signs of developmental problems.
Viewing home videos of the children before age 6 months,
independent observers gauged various aspects of attention and
behavior. The behaviors fell into three categories: social attention
(looking at, orienting toward, smiling at, or making sounds to
people); nonsocial attention (the same behaviors directed toward
objects); and social behavior (such as continued attention to
someone's body, trying to touch another person, or anticipating what
an adult plans to do).
While both groups of children scored similarly for nonsocial
actions, the researchers found notable differences between the
autistic and other children in social attention and behavior. Their
data suggest "that this social deficit appears from the beginning
and that it does not depend on maturation to become apparent," the
scientists write this month in the Journal of the American
Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Although parents are reliable sources of information about their
child's development, they often notice a problem only when the child
shows a lag in language abilities, says Pegeen Cronin, a
psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We do
know that in babies, socialization comes in very early, before
speech actually, so analyzing videotapes remains a very helpful
source of information," she says.
Further studies should try to distinguish the effects of other
factors: for instance, amount of parental attention, and the number
of siblings and how close in age they are to the autistic child. By
providing more and constant stimulation, a sibling can be "somewhat
of an intervention," Dr. Cronin says. And scientists also need to
focus on autistic children who have average IQ scores, to separate
the impact of lower intelligence from the difference in social
behavior, she says.
In the current study, the researchers propose that problems with
social behaviors underlie other impairments of autism – such as
difficulty interpreting others' feelings, trouble with sharing, and
a tendency to "tune out" their surroundings.
"We can imagine that an early intervention program ... providing
compelling social input to the child could decrease the cumulative
effects" of the initial social deficit, the scientists write.
But Dr. Cronin, associate director of UCLA's Autism Evaluation
Clinic, points out that early diagnosis requires considerable
expertise. "In this study ... the people doing the evaluation not
only required time-intensive evaluation and services but also were
experts in the field," she says. "So yes, it might be possible
ultimately to diagnose before 6 months, but the people who even now
can diagnose before 2 years are those who are at the very top of the
expertise in their field."
Honing the ability to detect autism early may help settle the
controversy over whether certain childhood vaccines cause the
condition. One vaccination that some people have considered a
suspect in autism – the measles, mumps and rubella shot – is first
given to a child between 12 and 15 months, according to current
pediatric recommendations. Other concerns have focused on a
mercury-containing preservative, thimerosal, which is being reduced
in, or phased out, of vaccines.
People attribute autism to childhood vaccines for two reasons,
Dr. Cronin says. "There's a subgroup of kids with autism who do seem
to have an immune system that is not as well developed, and so they
might have a stronger reaction than most kids" – such as a rash or
fever after the shot.
The other issue is the window in which developmental problems
become obvious. The vaccination is given shortly before the time
some people start thinking that something's not right with their
child, Dr. Cronin says. So parents assume it must have been the
measles, mumps and rubella shot that caused the problem. The new
research is helpful, she says, because "it shows that there were
problems beforehand."
E-mail
kpatterson@dallasnews.com
