Researchers discover gross motor, communication and language score differences between minority and non-minority toddlers with ASD. The authors suggest that due to cultural differences, minority parents may not seek intervention services until more significant delays are present. Methods to improve early identification in these groups are discussed.
Researchers at UCONN have developed an intermodel preferential looking assessment that relies on the child's attention, rather than verbal or gestural responses, to evaluate language comprehension.
A large, prospective study found that children with and without ASD were developmentally similar at 6 months based on clinical tests. Lead author Dr. Rebecca Landa reported, “for those children who went on to develop autism, the earliest signs of atypical development were non-specific to autism, such as general communication or motor delay.”
Contrary to their hypothesis, Sally Rogers and colleagues found that toddlers with ASD in a brief, parent-delivered ESDM program did not make greater gains or show reduced core ASD symptoms compared to autistic toddlers in a community ESDM program. Study strongly suggests number of intervention hours and younger age at initiation are key to maximizing intervention benefits, even for 1 and 2 year olds. Authors say, “the ‘wait and see’ approach to early ASD must be replaced by an ‘act now’ mentality.”
Dr. Eric Courchesne recently published his work he previewed at this year's IMFAR in the "Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry."
The mRNA expression abnormalities reliably observed in peripheral blood mononuclear cells, which are safely and easily assayed in infants, offer the first potential peripheral blood–based, early biomarker panel of risk for autism in infants and toddlers. Future work should verify these biomarkers and evaluate whether they may also serve as indirect indices of deviant molecular neural mechanisms in autism.
According to researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, a new parent evaluation tool may help identify children with ASDs as early as 12 months.
Study from Vanderbilt University uses eye-tracking and visual event-related potentials to measure attention to changing facial features in infants at high-risk for developing autism.
