Sharyn Sakadakis, Kevin Durkin & Murray Maybery

University of Western Australia

The goals of the research

The research was concerned with the development of language, cognition and socialisation in typically developing children, children with developmental delay and children with autism. The aim of the research was to identify a number of behaviours that could help to identify autism much earlier. Early diagnosis means early treatment, and research elsewhere has shown that this can be very beneficial to children with autism and/or developmental delay.

Findings

Parental reports

To examine early behaviours, parents were asked about their child’s development. A number of questions distinguished children with autism and developmental delay from those with typical development. Only a few questions distinguished children with autism from both children with developmental delay and children with typical development. These include:

Does your child avoid eye contact?
Does your child show you things that interest him to engage your attention?
Does your child take an interest in other children?
Does your child imitate you?
Does your child respond to his/her name?
Does your child take an interest in a certain part of the toy, rather than using it
as it was intended?

For example, Figure 1 shows the parents’ responses for the first question, avoiding eye contact. As you can see, most parents reported that children with autism tend to avoid eye contact; typically developing children tended to make eye contact, while children with developmental disorders tended to fall in between.

Figure 1. Does your child avoid eye contact?

Note: TDC = typically developing children; AC = autistic children; DD = children with developmental delay

Similar patterns were found in responses to each of the other questions. This is an important finding, because it helps us to identify a specific set of behaviours which differentiate among these groups of children.

Early videotapes

Video footage of children taken around their first birthday was also collected to obtain information on early behaviours. A number of features discriminated children with autism from both children with developmental delay and typical development. These include:

Limited eye contact
Fewer social smiles
Failure to orient to name
Lack of imitation of motor behaviours
Fewer instances of functional play
Failure to show objects of interest to others
Failure to follow simple directions

Experimental tasks

Finally, a number of tasks based on different theories of autism were administered to children. These tasks concerned the children’s abilities:

· to take into account other people’s mental processes (i.e., awareness that other people have different thoughts to one’s own), to share attention with another person

· to solve simple problems, memorise items and plan tasks

· to integrate pieces of related information into a whole picture (e.g., seeing a fridge, stove and sink and realising you are in the kitchen).

Results indicate that tasks measuring joint attention (two people looking at the same object together) accurately discriminated children with autism from both children with typical development and developmental delay. For example, one such task involves activating a mechanical toy and, when the child is attending, withdrawing the toy. While the majority of children with developmental delay and typical development make eye contact with the examiner after the toy is withdrawn, most children with autism do not.

The other tasks produced mixed results, but children with autism tended to do least well with the memory and planning tasks. These results add to our understanding of the ways in which social and communicative difficulties characterise the early symptoms of autism.

Next steps in the research

On the basis of these findings, a questionnaire has been devised. It is envisaged that parents of typically developing infants aged 18-24 months and infants who are considered to be at risk (i.e., siblings of children with autism and infants referred to paediatricians for developmental difficulties) will complete the questionnaire. Those who fail a number of key items on the questionnaire will receive a follow up assessment and be referred for further consultation.

If you have any further questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact Sharyn ~ email: sharyn@psy.uwa.edu.au