Lauren B. Adamson

The Still Face: A History of a Shared Experimental Paradigm

When faced by a suddenly unresponsive social partner, young infants typically react by sobering and gazing away. This still-face reaction has intrigued researchers for several decades. In this article, we present a history of the still-face paradigm in which we locate early observations of the still-face effect, describe the formalization of a procedure that reliably produces it, and discuss how this procedure has been used to investigate a broad range of questions about early social and emotional development. In addition, we reflect on the heuristic value of shared experimental paradigms.

Joint Engagement and the Emergence of Language in Children with Autism and Down Syndrome

Systematic longitudinal observations were made as typically developing toddlers and young children with autism and with Down syndrome interacted with their caregivers in order to document how joint engagement developed over a year-long period and how variations in joint engagement experiences predicted language outcome. Children with autism displayed a persistent deficit in coordinated joint attention; children with Down syndrome were significantly less able to infuse symbols into joint engagement. For all groups, variations in amount of symbol-infused supported joint engagement, a state in which the child attended to a shared object and to language but not actively to the partner, contributed to differences in expressive and receptive language outcome, over and above initial language capacity.

Breif Report: Sensory Abnormalities as Distinguishing Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Young Children

The purpose of this study was to explore the sensory profile of young children with ASD compared to young children with other developmental delays (DD) at first ASD assessment. Results found that young children with ASD had more tactile and taste/smell sensitivities and difficulties with auditory filtering than young children with other DD. Moreover, sensory scores were significantly correlated with stereotyped interests and behaviors. These findings support the hypotheses that young children with ASD show more sensory impairments than young children with other DD and that sensory symptoms are significantly related to stereotyped interests and behaviors. Results also suggest that sensory abnormalities are distinguishing symptoms of ASD that should be considered in diagnostic algorithms for younger cohorts.

CRYING IN !KUNG SAN INFANTS: A TEST OF THE CULTURAL SPECIFICITY HYPOTHESIS

The pattern of crying and fretting behavior during the first two years is described for 46 !Kung San infants from a hunter‐gatherer society in northwestern Botswana. Despite markedly different caretaking practices predisposing to quieter infants, crying and fretting were significantly greater during the first three months, and a peak pattern was present. Measurement of crying ‘intensity’ indicated that it was predominantly short and fretful. The results support the concept that the early peak pattern is not specific to infants in western industrialized societies, and may represent a behavior universal to the human species. The caretaking differences between societies primarily appear to affect crying duration rather than its frequency and pattern in early infancy.

The Contribution of Early Communication Quality to Low-Income Children’s Language Success

The disparity in the amount and quality of language that low-income children hear relative to their more-affluent peers is often referred to as the 30-million-word gap. Here, we expand the literature about this disparity by reporting the relative contributions of the quality of early parent-child communication and the quantity of language input in 60 low-income families. Including both successful and struggling language learners from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we noted wide variation in the quality of nonverbal and verbal interactions (symbol-infused joint engagement, routines and rituals, fluent and connected communication) at 24 months, which accounted for 27% of the variance in expressive language 1 year later. These indicators of quality were considerably more potent predictors of later language ability than was the quantity of mothers’ words during the interaction or sensitive parenting. Bridging the word gap requires attention to how caregivers and children establish a communication foundation within low-income families.

The Utility of the Social Communication Questionnaire in Screening for Autism in Children Referred for Early Intervention.

The Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) is a brief parental screening instrument used to identify children With autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Screening validity for the SCQ has been supported in children 4 years of age and older, but ongoing studies indicate that the SCQ may not be effective in identifying very young children With ASD. The purpose of the current investigation Was to determine Whether the SCQ could distinguish children With ASD from children With other developmental delays in a sample of very young children referred for early intervention. Results found that the recommended cutoff score of 15 yielded a sensitivity value of .47 and a specificity value of .89. Maximum sensitivity and specificity rates Were achieved When the SCQ cutoff score Was reduced to 11 (.89 and .89, respectively). Implications of the findings are discussed.

Joint attention in preverbal children: autism and developmental language disorder.

For preverbal children, episodes of joint attention are contexts for communication with responsive adults. This study describes the joint attention of 3- to 5-year-old children, 15 with autistic disorder (AD) and 15 with developmental language disorder (DLD), during play sessions with unfamiliar adults. Adults used fewer conventional than literal bids for joint attention with AD children and vice versa with DLD children. Children with AD were less likely to engage in joint attention than children with DLD. In the allocation of attention, AD children monitored the channel of communication with the adult 37% less often than DLD children. We discuss how perturbations in reciprocal interactions permeate the sharing situation and the implications of this problem for the mastery of cultural conventions.

Social referencing by young chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Social referencing is the seeking of information from another individual and the use of that information to evaluate a situation. It is a well-documented ability in human infants but has not been studied experimentally in nonhuman primates. Seventeen young nursery-reared chimpanzees (14 to 41 months old) were observed in a standard social referencing paradigm in which they received happy and fear messages concerning novel objects from a familiar human caregiver. Each chimpanzee looked referentially at their caregiver, and the emotional messages that they received differentially influenced their gaze behavior and avoidance of the novel objects. It is concluded that chimpanzees can acquire information about their complex social and physical environments through social referencing and can use emotional information to alter their own behavior.

Autism and joint attention: Young children's responses to maternal bids ☆

Problems with joint attention are an early manifestation of autism. Young boys with and without autism were observed communicating with their mothers in contexts that afforded commenting, requesting, and interacting. Mothers of autistic sons made as many attention-regulating bids as mothers of typically developing sons, and these bids did not differ significantly in duration. However, fewer occurred in commenting contexts, and they were less likely to rely on purely conventional means. Their sons accepted fewer bids, and they more often appeared unaware of a bid. These findings are discussed using a transactional view of communicative problems in autism in which a childs difficulty regulating shared attention prompts adults to augment conventional communication with literal, object-focused acts.

Infants' conventionalized acts: Gestures and words with mothers and peers☆

Abstract The present study provides empirical support for several ideas about the importance of social context during early communication development that Bruner and others have found compelling. Twenty-eight infants were videotaped at home playing with their mothers, with peers, and while alone at 9, 12, and 15 months of age. Occurrences of gestures and words were noted as well as whether infants and their partners were both attending to the same object and whether infants were engaged in “action formats”. Results suggest that, as conventionalized acts emerge toward the end of infancy, their production is facilitated by the availability of an attentive, comprehending partner, joint attention toward an object with that partner, and the enactment of an action format.