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. 2008 Sep;12(5):473-85.
doi: 10.1177/1362361308094504.

Visual disengagement in the infant siblings of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Lisa V Ibanez  1 , Daniel S Messinger, Lisa Newell, Brittany Lambert, Mark Sheskin
Affiliations

Visual disengagement in the infant siblings of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Lisa V Ibanez et al. Autism. 2008 Sep.

Abstract

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are impaired in visually disengaging attention in both social and non-social contexts. These impairments may, in subtler form, also affect the infant siblings of children with ASD (ASD-sibs). We investigated patterns of visual attention (gazing) in 6-month-old ASD-sibs (n=17) and the siblings of typically developing children (COMP-sibs: n=17) during the Face-to-Face/Still-Face Protocol (FFSF), in which parents are sequentially responsive, non-responsive, and responsive to their infants. Throughout the protocol, ASD-sibs shifted their gaze to and from their parents' faces less frequently than did COMP-sibs. The mean durations of ASD-sibs' gazes away from their parents' faces were longer than those of COMP-sibs. ASD-sibs and COMP-sibs did not differ in the mean durations of gazes at their parents' faces. In sum, ASD-sibs showed no deficits in visual interest to their parents' faces, but greater interest than COMP-sibs in non-face stimuli.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Overall Gaze Shifts in the FFSF
Note: ASD-sibs has significantly lower Frequency of Gaze Shifts than COMP-sibs across the FFSF protocol, F(1, 27) = 4.98, p = .03, η2 = .16.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Gaze away from parent’s face (mean duration) during the FFSF
Note: ASD-sibs had significantly longer Mean Duration of Gaze Away than COMP-sibs across the FFSF protocol, F(1, 27) = 5.31, p = .03, η2 = .16. There was no interaction between episode and group, F(2, 27) = .56, p = .58.
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