Shifting Preferences for Primate Faces in Neurotypical Infants and Infants Later Diagnosed With ASD.
Infants later diagnosed with ASD lose interest in all faces, human or monkey, between 6 and 18 months.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Yamashiro et al. (2019) watched babies look at faces. They used pictures of people and monkey faces.
The team tracked eye movements from 6 to 18 months. Some babies were later diagnosed with ASD. Others were neurotypical.
What they found
Babies later diagnosed with ASD looked less and less at any face. The drop was steep between 6 and 18 months.
Typical babies kept steady interest in faces. The ASD group lost interest in both human and monkey faces alike.
How this fits with other research
Spriggs et al. (2015) saw the same lost rebound in eye interest. Their babies never regained liking for eyes after 9 months.
Palomo et al. (2022) seems to disagree. They found no face-looking gap at 9–12 months in home videos. The difference is setting. Amy’s lab gave tight control and a wider age span. Home movies capture natural noise.
Thomas et al. (2021) moved one step further. They used gaze-contingent screens. Infant siblings of ASD kids gave fewer smiles and imitations even when their eyes moved normally. Together the papers trace a line: early looking dips, then social action fades.
Why it matters
You can watch face interest slip away before the first birthday. Add brief face games to your 6–12 month sessions. Note if the baby stops looking at both human and animal faces. A quick eye-tracking check, or even careful observation, can flag risk early and guide faster referral.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Infants look at others' faces to gather social information. Newborns look equally at human and monkey faces but prefer human faces by 1 month, helping them learn to communicate and interact with others. Infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) look at human faces less than neurotypical infants, which may underlie some deficits in social-communication later in life. Here, we asked whether infants later diagnosed with ASD differ in their preferences for both human and nonhuman primate faces compared to neurotypical infants over their first 2 years of life. We compare infants' relative looking times to human or monkey faces paired with nonface controls (Experiment 1) and infants' total looking times to pairs of human and monkey faces (Experiment 2). Across two experiments, we find that between 6 and 18 months, infants later diagnosed with ASD show a greater downturn (decrease after an initial increase) in looking at both primate faces than neurotypical infants. A decrease in attention to primate faces may partly underlie the social-communicative difficulties in children with ASD and could reveal how early perceptual experiences with faces affect development. Autism Res 2019, 12: 249-262 © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Looking at faces helps infants learn to interact with others. Infants look equally at human and monkey faces at birth but prefer human faces by 1 month. Infants later diagnosed with ASD who show deficits in social-communication look at human faces less than neurotypical infants. We find that a downturn (decline after an initial increase) in attention to both human and monkey faces between 6 and 18 months may partly underlie the social-communicative difficulties in children with ASD.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2019 · doi:10.1007/978-0-387-98141-3