Funding outcome

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a common disability that impacts how a child understands and interacts with their world. For example, a child with ASD may have difficulties communicating with their family, interacting and making friends, expressing their feelings and emotions, and even shifting their attention from one interesting toy to another. Although ASD is often not diagnosed until age 4 or later, children may show symptoms of ASD before their first year birthday. This delay in diagnosis suggests that we can do better in detecting early signs of ASD. Identifying these early signs or 'risk markers' in the first year could not only help lower the age of initial detection and diagnosis of ASD, but also allow for earlier intervention which can have a great impact on a child ability to better interact in his/her own world. One method we can use to detect early signs of ASD is by studying younger siblings of children who have a diagnosis of ASD, starting in infancy. These younger 'infant siblings' are at a greater risk of also being diagnosed with ASD. Recent research on early signs of ASD has suggested that difficulties in expressing emotions and focusing attention are two of the earliest signs of ASD. In fact, studies of younger siblings of children with the diagnosis have shown that these infants are impaired in their ability to (1) regulate their emotions (i.e., they're fussy) and, (2) focus their attention on one or more interesting objects in their environment, by their first birthday. In other words, these infants have difficulties in their emotional regulation and attention control in the first few months of life. But how and why does poor emotional regulation and attention control lead to ASD? This is not known and the current research project aims to answer this important question. By closely following the development of infant siblings starting at 6 months until 3 years of age, we can better understand how these infants control their emotions and attention - both externally (i.e., their behavior responses) and internally (i.e., how their body, such as heart beat, responds). Moreover, we can also see how these processes interact to cause other ASD symptoms and eventually a diagnosis of ASD. That is, by identifying early emotional and attentional risk markers of ASD, we may be able to detect ASD earlier - before the 2nd year of life. This can have important implications not only for these infants, but also for parents and clinicians: earlier detection can lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment of ASD, which can help improve behavior, skills, and long-term outcomes for these children. Therefore, this research project will improve our understanding of how ASD develops in infants and may open the doors for developing interventions that may reduce or prevent expression of ASD.