Authors
Elisa Di Giorgio, Orsola Rosa-Salva, Elisa Frasnelli, Antonio Calcagnì, Marco Lunghi, Maria Luisa Scattoni, Francesca Simion, Giorgio Vallortigara
Publication date
2021/8/4
Journal
Scientific reports
Volume
11
Issue
1
Pages
15785
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK
Description
Despite an increasing interest in detecting early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), the pathogenesis of the social impairments characterizing ASD is still largely unknown. Atypical visual attention to social stimuli is a potential early marker of the social and communicative deficits of ASD. Some authors hypothesized that such impairments are present from birth, leading to a decline in the subsequent typical functioning of the learning-mechanisms. Others suggested that these early deficits emerge during the transition from subcortically to cortically mediated mechanisms, happening around 2–3 months of age. The present study aimed to provide additional evidence on the origin of the early visual attention disturbance that seems to characterize infants at high risk (HR) for ASD. Four visual preference tasks were used to investigate social attention in 4-month-old HR, compared to low-risk (LR) infants of the same …
Total citations
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