Sam Wass

Distortions and disconnections: disrupted brain connectivity in autism

The past few years have seen considerable interest in findings of abnormal brain connectivity in the autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We review recent work from neuroimaging and other sources, and argue that there is considerable convergent evidence suggesting that connectivity is disrupted in ASD. We point to evidence both of local over-connectivity and of long-distance under-connectivity, and describe some non-uniformities in this picture, most notably that disruptions appear more severe in later-developing cortical regions. We conclude by discussing a number of extant questions. Firstly, we consider whether aberrant connectivity should be seen as part of the primary pathogenesis of autism, or whether disrupted connectivity in ASD emerges over time. Secondly, we consider how the patterns of disrupted connectivity found in ASD might relate to those being found in a range of other disorders.

Training Attentional Control in Infancy

Summary Several recent studies have reported that cognitive training in adults does not lead to generalized performance improvements [1, 2], whereas many studies with younger participants (children 4 years and older) have reported distal transfer [3, 4]. This is consistent with convergent evidence [5–8] for greater neural and behavioral plasticity earlier in development. We used gaze-contingent paradigms to train 11-month-old infants on a battery of attentional control tasks. Relative to an active control group, and following only a relatively short training period, posttraining assessments revealed improvements in cognitive control and sustained attention, reduced saccadic reaction times, and reduced latencies to disengage visual attention. Trend changes were also observed in spontaneous looking behavior during free play, but no change was found in working memory. The amount of training correlated with the degree of improvement on some measures. These findings are to our knowledge the first demonstration of distal transfer following attentional control training in infancy. Given the longitudinal relationships identified between early attentional control and learning in academic settings [9, 10], and the causal role that impaired control of attention may play in disrupting learning in several disorders [11–14], the current results open a number of avenues for future work.

Developing technology for autism: an interdisciplinary approach

We present an interdisciplinary methodology for designing interactive multi-modal technology for young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In line with many other researchers in the field, we believe that the key to developing technology in this context is to embrace perspectives from diverse disciplines to arrive at a methodology that delivers satisfactory outcomes for all stakeholders. The ECHOES project provided us with the opportunity to develop a technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environment that facilitates acquisition and exploration of social skills by typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). ECHOES’ methodology and the learning environment rely crucially on multi-disciplinary expertise including developmental psychology, visual arts, human–computer interaction, artificial intelligence, education, and several other cognate disciplines. In this article, we reflect on the methods needed to develop a TEL environment for young users with ASDs by identifying key features, benefits, and challenges of this approach.

Parsing eye-tracking data of variable quality to provide accurate fixation duration estimates in infants and adults

Researchers studying infants’ spontaneous allocation of attention have traditionally relied on hand-coding infants’ direction of gaze from videos; these techniques have low temporal and spatial resolution and are labor intensive. Eye-tracking technology potentially allows for much more precise measurement of how attention is allocated at the subsecond scale, but a number of technical and methodological issues have given rise to caution about the quality and reliability of high temporal resolution data obtained from infants. We present analyses suggesting that when standard dispersal-based fixation detection algorithms are used to parse eye-tracking data obtained from infants, the results appear to be heavily influenced by interindividual variations in data quality. We discuss the causes of these artifacts, including fragmentary fixations arising from flickery or unreliable contact with the eyetracker and variable degrees of imprecision in reported position of gaze. We also present new algorithms designed to cope with these problems by including a number of new post hoc verification checks to identify and eliminate fixations that may be artifactual. We assess the results of our algorithms by testing their reliability using a variety of methods and on several data sets. We contend that, with appropriate data analysis methods, fixation duration can be a reliable and stable measure in infants. We conclude by discussing ways in which studying fixation durations during unconstrained orienting may offer insights into the relationship between attention and learning in naturalistic settings.

Shorter spontaneous fixation durations in infants with later emerging autism

Little is known about how spontaneous attentional deployment differs on a millisecond-level scale in the early development of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We measured fine-grained eye movement patterns in 6-to 9-month-old infants at high or low familial risk (HR/LR) of ASD while they viewed static images. We observed shorter fixation durations (i.e. the time interval between saccades) in HR than LR infants. Preliminary analyses indicate that these results were replicated in a second cohort of infants. Fixation durations were shortest in those infants who went on to receive an ASD diagnosis at 36 months. While these findings demonstrate early-developing atypicality in fine-grained measures of attentional deployment early in the etiology of ASD, the specificity of these effects to ASD remains to be determined.

Temporal dynamics of arousal and attention in 12‐month‐old infants

Research from the animal literature suggests that dynamic, ongoing changes in arousal lead to dynamic changes in an individuals state of anticipatory readiness, influencing how individuals distribute their attention to the environment. However, multiple peripheral indices exist for studying arousal in humans, each showing change on different temporal scales, challenging whether arousal is best characterized as a unitary or a heterogeneous construct. Here, in 53 typical 12-month-olds, we recorded heart rate (HR), head movement patterns, electrodermal activity (EDA), and attention (indexed via look duration) during the presentation of 20 min of mixed animations and TV clips. We also examined triggers for high arousal episodes. Using cross-correlations and auto-correlations, we found that HR and head movement show strong covariance on a sub-minute scale, with changes in head movement consistently preceding changes in HR. EDA showed significant covariance with both, but on much larger time-scales. HR and head movement showed consistent relationships with look duration, but the relationship is temporally specific: relations are observed between head movement, HR and look duration at 30 s time-lag, but not at larger time intervals. No comparable relationships were found for EDA. Changes in head movement and HR occurred before changes in look duration, but not for EDA. Our results suggest that consistent patterns of covariation between heart rate, head movement and EDA can be identified, albeit on different time-scales, and that associations with look duration are present for head movement and heart rate, but not for EDA. Our results suggests that there is a single construct of arousal that can identified across multiple measures, and that phasic changes in arousal precede phasic changes in look duration.

Developmental Psychology: How Social Context Influences Infants’ Attention

A recent study shows that changes in the focus of a social partners attention associate, on a second-by-second scale, with changes in how much attention infants pay to objects.

Erratum: Attention training for infants at familial risk of ADHD (INTERSTAARS): Study protocol for a randomised controlled trial. [Trials., 17, (2016) (608)] DOI: 10.1186/s13063-016-1727-0

Author details Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London, London, UK. Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK. MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, IoPPN, King’s College London, London, UK. NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, London, UK. Department of Psychology, IoPPN, King’s College London, London, UK. Department of Biostatistics, IoPPN, King’s College London, London, UK. Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK. Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK. Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. School of Psychology, University of East London, London, UK. Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.