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Anxiety and Attentional Bias to Threat in Children at Increased Familial Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

ABSTRACT: Anxiety and threat bias were examined in 6-8-year-old children at familial-risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and low-risk (LR, n?=?37) controls. The high-risk (HR) group was divided into those who met diagnostic criteria for ASD (HR-ASD, n?=?15) and those who did not (HR-non ASD, n?=?24). The HR-ASD group had highest levels of parent-reported anxiety. The HR-non ASD group exhibited increased threat bias on a spatial-cueing task, while the HR-ASD group did not. Anxiety symptoms were associated with both threat bias and ASD severity. These findings suggest that the mechanisms underlying anxiety in HR siblings without ASD are similar to those in non-ASD populations. However, among children with ASD, hypersensitivity to threat may not underlie anxiety symptoms.

SUBMITTER: Milosavljevic B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5676835 | biostudies-other | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Anxiety and Attentional Bias to Threat in Children at Increased Familial Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Milosavljevic Bosiljka B Shephard Elizabeth E Happé Francesca G FG Johnson Mark H MH Charman Tony T

Journal of autism and developmental disorders 20171201 12

Anxiety and threat bias were examined in 6-8-year-old children at familial-risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and low-risk (LR, n = 37) controls. The high-risk (HR) group was divided into those who met diagnostic criteria for ASD (HR-ASD, n = 15) and those who did not (HR-non ASD, n = 24). The HR-ASD group had highest levels of parent-reported anxiety. The HR-non ASD group exhibited increased threat bias on a spatial-cueing task, while the HR-ASD group did not. Anxiety symptoms were associa ...[more]

PMID: 28116669

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Project description:PurposeChildren with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate many mechanisms of lexical acquisition that support language in typical development; however, 1 notable exception is the shape bias. The bases of these children's difficulties with the shape bias are not well understood, and the current study explored potential sources of individual differences from the perspectives of both attentional and conceptual accounts of the shape bias.MethodShape bias performance from the dataset of Potrzeba, Fein, and Naigles (2015) was analyzed, including 33 children with typical development (M = 20 months; SD = 1.6), 15 children with ASD with high verbal abilities (M = 33 months; SD = 4.6), and 14 children with ASD with low verbal abilities (M = 33 months; SD = 6.6). Lexical predictors (shape-side noun percentage from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory; Fenson et al., 2007) and social-pragmatic predictors (joint attention duration during play sessions) were considered as predictors of subsequent shape bias performance.ResultsFor children in the low verbal ASD group, initiation of joint attention (positively) and passive attention (negatively) predicted subsequent shape bias performance, controlling for initial language and developmental level. Proportion of child's known nouns with shape-defined properties correlated negatively with shape bias performance in the high verbal ASD group but did not reach significance in regression models.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that no single account sufficiently explains the observed individual differences in shape bias performance in children with ASD. Nonetheless, these findings break new ground in highlighting the role of social communicative interactions as integral to understanding specific language outcomes (i.e., the shape bias) in children with ASD, especially those with low verbal abilities, and point to new hypotheses concerning the linguistic content of these interactions.Presentation videohttps://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7299581.

Dataset Information

Anxiety and Attentional Bias to Threat in Children at Increased Familial Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Publications

Anxiety and Attentional Bias to Threat in Children at Increased Familial Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

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