| 2. |
- Fish, Laurel A., et al.
(författare)
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Development of the pupillary light reflex from 9 to 24 months : association with common autism spectrum disorder (ASD) genetic liability and 3-year ASD diagnosis
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0021-9630 .- 1469-7610. ; 62:11, s. 1308-1319
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Although autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is heritable, the mechanisms through which genes contribute to symptom emergence remain unclear. Investigating candidate intermediate phenotypes such as the pupillary light reflex (PLR) prospectively from early in development could bridge genotype and behavioural phenotype.Methods: Using eye tracking, we longitudinally measured the PLR at 9, 14 and 24 months in a sample of infants (N = 264) enriched for a family history of ASD; 27 infants received an ASD diagnosis at 3 years. We examined the 9- to 24-month developmental trajectories of PLR constriction latency (onset; ms) and amplitude (%) and explored their relation to categorical 3-year ASD outcome, polygenic liability for ASD and dimensional 3-year social affect (SA) and repetitive/restrictive behaviour (RRB) traits. Polygenic scores for ASD (PGSASD) were calculated for 190 infants.Results: While infants showed a decrease in latency between 9 and 14 months, higher PGSASD was associated with a smaller decrease in latency in the first year (? = ?.16, 95% CI = ?0.31, ?0.002); infants with later ASD showed a significantly steeper decrease in latency (a putative ?catch-up?) between 14 and 24 months relative to those with other outcomes (typical: ? = .54, 95% CI = 0.08, 0.99; other: ? = .53, 95% CI = 0.02, 1.04). Latency development did not associate with later dimensional variation in ASD-related traits. In contrast, change in amplitude was not related to categorical ASD or genetics, but decreasing 9- to 14-month amplitude was associated with higher SA (? = .08, 95% CI = 0.01, 0.14) and RRB (? = .05, 95% CI = 0.004, 0.11) traits.Conclusions: These findings corroborate PLR development as possible intermediate phenotypes being linked to both genetic liability and phenotypic outcomes. Future work should incorporate alternative measures (e.g. functionally informed structural and genetic measures) to test whether distinct neural mechanisms underpin PLR alterations.
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| 3. |
- Sanchez, Monica Siqueiros, et al.
(författare)
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Visual disengagement in young infants in relation to age, sex, SES, developmental level and adaptive functioning
- 2021
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Ingår i: Infant Behavior and Development. - : Elsevier. - 0163-6383 .- 1879-0453 .- 1934-8800. ; 63
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Visual attention plays a key role in infants' interaction with the environment, and shapes their behavioral and brain development. As such, early problems with flexibly switching gaze from one stimulus to another (visual disengagement) have been hypothesized to lead to developmental difficulties (e.g. joint attention and social skills) over time. This study aimed to identify crosssectional associations between performance in the Gap task (gaze shift latencies and visual attention disengagement) and measures of development and adaptive behavior in conjunction to any sex or socioeconomic status effects in infancy. We measured visual attention disengagement in 436 5-month-old infants and calculated its association with cognitive developmental level, adaptive behaviours, socioeconomic status (SES) and biological sex. In the Gap task, participants must redirect their gaze from a central stimulus to an appearing peripheral stimulus. The three experimental conditions of the task (Gap, Baseline and Overlap) differ on the timepoint when the central stimuli disappears in relation to the appearance of the peripheral stimulus: 200 ms before the peripheral stimulus appears (Gap), simultaneously to its appearance (Baseline), or with peripheral stimulus offset (Overlap). The data from the experimental conditions showed the expected pattern, with average latencies being the shortest in the Gap and longest in the Overlap condition. Females were faster (p = .004) than males in the Gap condition, which could indicate that arousal-related effects differ as a function of biological sex. Infants from higher SES were slower (p =.031) in the Overlap condition compared to lower SES infants. This suggests that basic visual attention may differ by socio-cultural background, and should be considered when studying visual attention and its developmental correlates. We observed no significant association to concurrent developmental level or adaptive function. Given its large sample size, this study provides a useful reference for future studies of visual disengagement in early infancy.
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