| 1. |
- Bussu, Giorgia, et al.
(författare)
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Manipulation of phasic arousal by auditory cues is associated with subsequent changes in visual orienting to faces in infancy
- 2023
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Nature. - 2045-2322. ; 13:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This eye-tracking study investigated the effect of sound-induced arousal on social orienting under different auditory cue conditions in 5-month-old (n = 25; n = 13 males) and 10-month-old infants (n = 21; n = 14 males) participating in a spontaneous visual search task. Results showed: (1) larger pupil dilation discriminating between high and low volume (b = 0.02, p = 0.007), but not between social and non-social sounds (b = 0.004, p = 0.64); (2) faster visual orienting (b = − 0.09, p < 0.001) and better social orienting at older age (b = 0.94, p < 0.001); (3) a fast habituation effect on social orienting after high-volume sounds (χ2(2) = 7.39, p = 0.025); (4) a quadratic association between baseline pupil size and target selection (b = − 1.0, SE = 0.5, χ2(1) = 4.04, p = 0.045); (5) a positive linear association between pupil dilation and social orienting (b = 0.09, p = 0.039). Findings support adaptive gain theories of arousal, extending the link between phasic pupil dilation and task performance to spontaneous social orienting in infancy.
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| 2. |
- Bussu, Giorgia, et al.
(författare)
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The latent structure of emerging cognitive abilities : An infant twin study
- 2023
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Ingår i: Intelligence. - : Elsevier. - 0160-2896 .- 1873-7935. ; 99, s. 101771-101771
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is well known that genetic factors account for up to 70% of variability in cognition from childhood to adulthood. However, less is known about the first year of life. This study investigated the etiological factors influencing individual variability in different domains of emerging cognitive and motor abilities in early infancy, and to what extent genetic and environmental influences are unique or shared across different domains. We compared multivariate twin models built on scores from the five scales of the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) in a community sample of monozygotic and dizygotic twins at 5 months of age (n=567). The results indicated a hierarchical etiological structure whereby a general genetic latent factor accounted for 54% of variance underlying the different domains of emerging cognitive and motor abilities (A=0.54, confidence interval CI=[0; 0.82]). We also found additional genetic influences that were specific to early motor and language development. Unlike previous findings on older children, we did not find significant influences of shared environment on the shared factor (C=0, CI=[0, 0.57]), or any specific scale. Furthermore, influences of unique environment, which include measurement error, were moderate and statistically significant (E=0.46, CI=0.18; 0.81]). This study provides strong evidence for a unitary hierarchical structure across different domains of emerging cognition. Evidence that a single common etiological factor, which we term infant g, contributes to a range of different abilities supports the view that in young infants, intrinsic and general neurodevelopmental processes are key drivers of observable behavioural differences in specific domains.
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| 3. |
- Falck-Ytter, Terje, Professor, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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The sensory-first account of autism
- 2023
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Ingår i: Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. - : Elsevier. - 0149-7634 .- 1873-7528. ; 153
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent data suggest that infants with later autism have striking differences in sensory processing. We recap these findings and discuss their implications for theories of autism emergence. Due to the primacy of sensory processing for developing cognitive systems, it is time to embrace a ‘sensory-first’ account of autism.
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| 4. |
- Mohammad, Salahuddin
(författare)
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Investigating mental health disorders in relation to job and living related factors
- 2023
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Job satisfaction plays an important role for life quality and health of working individuals. While studies have shown that self-reported mental health conditions such as stress, anxiety and depression are associated with job satisfaction, a large population-based study exploring and comparing self-reported physician posed diagnosed conditions and their association with job satisfaction and job tenure is missing. First study addresses the gap along with exploring the impact of the neurotic personality trait and other possible contributing factors.Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience lower well-being as demonstrated epidemiologically mostly for children and adolescents. Further etiological investigation of inclusive wellbeing, in terms of five wellbeing spectrum (5-WBS) traits including neuroticism, depression, loneliness, life satisfaction and positive affect, among adults with ASD may deepen the understanding. Seond study aims to investigate if a genetic predisposition for ASD is associated with 5-WBS traits using polygenic risk score (PRS) analysis.In the first study, sixteen mental health disorders diagnosed by physicians, categorized into four major groups were investigated in relation to employment status (108,711 participants) and in relation to job satisfaction and job tenure (34,808 participants). Analyses were performed using linear regression adjusted for age, sex, TDI, BMI, education, physical activity, work hours and neuroticism. In the second study, PRS for ASD were constructed in the UK Biobank (N = 337,423), based on the GWAS conducted by Psychiatric Genetics Consortium (18,381 cases, 27,969 comparisons) using PRSice-2. First study showed Neurotic & Stress Disorders, Eating Disorders and Other Mental Health Disorders were strongly associated with lower job satisfaction and shorter job tenure in both unadjusted and adjusted analyses. Neuroticism was strongly linked to job satisfaction but was not associated with job tenure. Second study showed, ASD PRS significantly predicted associations with all 5-WBS traits, showing a positive association with the negative WBS traits, neuroticism (max R2 = 0.04%, P < 1x10-4, AUC 0.51), depression (max R2 = 0.06%, P < 1x10-4, AUC 0.51), loneliness (max R2 = 0.04%, P < 1x10-4, AUC 0.51) and a negative association with the positive WBS traits, life satisfaction (max R2 = 0.08%, P < 1x10-4, AUC 0.56), positive affect (max R2 = 0.10%, P < 1x10-4, AUC 0.53).Findings of first study clarify the complex relationship of mental health with job satisfaction and job tenure which is very important to understand in designing measures to improve working life participation of individuals with mental health issues. The findings of second study suggest that adults carrying a high load of susceptible SNPs for ASD are more likely to show a decreased well-being.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Rudling, Maja, et al.
(författare)
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Infant responses to direct gaze and associations to autism : A live eye-tracking study
- 2023
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Ingår i: Autism. - : Sage Publications. - 1362-3613 .- 1461-7005.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Being looked at is an important communicative signal, and attenuated responses to such direct gaze have been suggested as an early sign of autism. Using live eye tracking, we examined whether direct gaze elicits different gaze responses in infants at ages 10, 14 and 18 months with and without later autism in real-life interaction. The sample consisted of 169 infants: 35 with elevated likelihood of autism and subsequent diagnosis, 94 without subsequent diagnosis and 40 with typical likelihood of autism. Infants in all groups tended to look more towards the adult’s face shortly after the direct gaze occurred. Neither how much nor how quickly the infants responded to the direct gaze differentiated the without elevated likelihood of autism and subsequent diagnosis and with elevated likelihood of autism and subsequent diagnosis groups. Infants in the typical likelihood group looked more at the face after the direct-gaze event than infants in the two elevated likelihood groups, but this result is tentative. In an exploratory analysis, infants in the elevated likelihood of autism and subsequent diagnosis group looked away quicker from faces with direct gaze than infants in the typical likelihood group, but this measure did not correlate with dimensional autism or differentiate between the two elevated likelihood groups. The current results suggest that attenuated behavioural responses to direct gaze in infancy are neither strong nor specific early markers of autism.Lay abstractWhen other people look directly towards us, we often respond by looking back at them, and such direct-gaze responses are important for establishing eye contact. Atypical eye contact is common in autism, but how and when this aspect of autism develops is not well understood. Here, we studied whether how much and how quickly infants respond to others’ direct gaze is associated with autism in toddlerhood. We did this by measuring direct-gaze responses in a playful social interaction using live eye tracking. The study included 169 infants, of whom 129 had an elevated likelihood of developing autism due to having a first-degree family member with the condition, and 40 with typical likelihood of autism. In the elevated likelihood group, 35 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at 3 years of age, and 94 were not. The results showed that infants in all three groups tended to increase their looking towards the adult’s face after the adult looked directly at them. However, neither how much nor how quickly the infants responded to direct gaze by looking back at the adult reliably differentiated the infants with or without subsequent autism. While infants in the elevated likelihood of autism and subsequent diagnosis group tended to look away quicker from faces with direct gaze than infants in the typical likelihood group, this measure did not differentiate between the two elevated likelihood groups. We interpret the results as supporting the view that atypical direct-gaze responses are not early markers of autism.
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| 7. |
- Viktorsson, Charlotte
(författare)
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Eyes on social development : Aetiology of infant gaze patterns and links to later socio-communicative abilities and autism
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Already at a very early age, infants preferentially attend to social stimuli. Although this is believed to be important for later social cognition and learning, little is known about the aetiology of infant social attention and associations to later abilities.In this thesis, I used eye tracking to study the influence of genes and environment on individual differences in different aspects of social attention, and developmental outcomes across different domains in toddlerhood in relation to both typical and atypical development. In Study I, the influence of genes and environment on the preference for looking at eyes versus mouth (eye-mouth-index) was assessed in 5-month-old twins. The eye-mouth-index was highly heritable, and a stronger tendency to look at the eyes was associated with later language comprehension. In Study II, sustained attention to faces was assessed in the same sample of infants, and found to be moderately heritable. Longer sustained attention was associated with more socio-communicative behaviours in toddlerhood. In Study III, videos of children interacting were shown to 18-month-olds with and without an elevated likelihood of autism. At specific time intervals in the videos, there was a significant difference in gaze allocation between the toddlers who did and did not receive an autism diagnosis later in childhood.The findings of this thesis suggest that both sustained attention to faces and eye versus mouth preference are heritable, meaning that young infants may select their environment based on their genotype, by looking at different aspects of a scene or a face. Being exposed to different types of input might influence later development, and these results indicate that social attention is associated with later social and communicative abilities, as well as later autism. In summary, this thesis contributes to the understanding of early social attention and how different aspects of this phenomenon are related to later development.
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