Measuring Behavior 2005: Apicella et al.

Early behavioral pathways in infants later diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Home Movies analysis through The Observer 4.0

F. Apicella, S. Maestro, A. Cesari, C. Grassi, A. Manfredi, P. Muratori, A. Petrozzi, L. Polidori and F.Muratori

IRCCS “Stella Maris” – Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy

Background: The evaluation of social behaviors through the technique of HM analysis in a group of subjects aged 0-18 months has highlighted the possibility to reveal several indicators of risk for an early ASD. These indicators concern eye contact, affective states, attention and communication. The hypothesis is that these markers represent a precursor of the deficit in joint attention, the core of the ASD social deficit, hence the need for developing tools for an early screening for identifying children at-risk.

Aim: The use of a specific scale for the evaluation of basic and complex behaviors (IBS - Infant Behavioral Scale) in order to codify early social and non-social behaviors and to study the development of early social competencies in ASD through HM analyses.

Design: To rate sequences of HM of the first 18 months of life of three groups of subjects: 1) a group constituted of ASD subjects, 2) a group constituted of mentally delayed subjects, 3) a control group constituted of typically developed subjects. The sequences regard the interactions between children and their care-givers, with or without objects. The Scale is composed by social and non-social items. Each group has been divided in three age ranges: 0-6 (T1), 6-12 (T2). 12-18 months (T3).
The Observer 4.0 (Noldus Information Technology) is used for application of the scale and for statistical analyses.

Results: The sequences of interaction between children and their care-givers of 12 subjects (4 for each group) have been selected, mixed and rated by 4 blind observers with IBS. Descriptive statistic and lag sequential analyses have been applied to identify specific behavioral profiles, related to the joint attention hypothesis. The differences emerged in social competencies development at T1, T2, and T3 will be discussed. These differences concern both the frequencies and the mean duration of social behaviors (i.e.: looking at people, orienting to name, social engagement), and their relation with care-giver stimulation.

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2005 , 5^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The Netherlands.