Social and non-social sensory responsivity in toddlers at high-risk for autism spectrum disorder.

The team watched 12-month-old toddlers who had an older sibling with autism. They tracked how each child reacted to sights, sounds, and touch in two kinds of moments: social ones, like a person calling the child’s name, and non-social ones, like a loud toy.

They repeated the same checks when the children turned 24 months and noted which ones later met ASD criteria.

Kids who were later diagnosed with ASD already showed stronger sensory reactions at 12 months. By 24 months, the gap had grown. The jump was the same for social and non-social events, so over-reaction was not tied only to people.

In plain numbers, sensory scores in the ASD group rose faster each month than in the non-ASD group.

A 1991 study (A, 1991) saw that autistic toddlers often turned away from their mother’s voice. That looks like the opposite of our paper, but the old work only checked speech preference, not general sound levels. The new study shows kids react too much to all stimuli, speech included, so the findings fit once you see the wider lens.

Two reviews help place these results. Kremkow et al. (2022) list digital apps that catch early autism signs; adding a quick sensory checklist to those apps could lift their accuracy. Cunningham (2012) warns that no single social tool tells the whole story; our data say you should add sensory items to any social scale you already use.

Brisson et al. (2012) found that infants later diagnosed with ASD opened their mouths late during spoon-feeding. Both papers flag early regulation problems, just in different senses: mouth timing versus sight, sound, and touch.

You can start sensory screening at the 12-month visit. Watch the child during bubbles, a toy hammer, and a caregiver’s hello. If reactions look big in both sets of moments, flag for follow-up and track the same items monthly. Adding two sensory questions to your intake form takes one minute and may speed referral by a year.