4.6 Article

The Bidirectional Social-Cognitive Mechanisms of the Social-Attention Symptoms of Autism

Journal

FRONTIERS IN PSYCHIATRY
Volume 12, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.752274

Keywords

joint attention; social orienting; social motivation; face processing; diagnosis; intervention; social-cognitive neuroscience; genetics

Categories

Ask authors/readers for more resources

This paper explores the differences in social attention development in children with ASD and proposes alternative conceptual views and hypotheses. Different models are discussed, including one focusing on spontaneous allocation of attention and another emphasizing attention coordination with others. Additionally, the paper considers the possibility that social attention symptoms may not impact older individuals with ASD and suggests that these symptoms may stem from differences in domain general attention and motivation mechanisms. The authors argue that infant social attention symptoms meet the criteria of a unique dimension of the ASD phenotype.
Differences in social attention development begin to be apparent in the 6(th) to 12(th) month of development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and theoretically reflect important elements of its neurodevelopmental endophenotype. This paper examines alternative conceptual views of these early social attention symptoms and hypotheses about the mechanisms involved in their development. One model emphasizes mechanism involved in the spontaneous allocation of attention to faces, or social orienting. Alternatively, another model emphasizes mechanisms involved in the coordination of attention with other people, or joint attention, and the socially bi-directional nature of its development. This model raises the possibility that atypical responses of children to the attention or the gaze of a social partner directed toward themselves may be as important in the development of social attention symptoms as differences in the development of social orienting. Another model holds that symptoms of social attention may be important to early development, but may not impact older individuals with ASD. The alterative model is that the social attention symptoms in infancy (social orienting and joint attention), and social cognitive symptoms in childhood and adulthood share common neurodevelopmental substrates. Therefore, differences in early social attention and later social cognition constitute a developmentally continuous axis of symptom presentation in ASD. However, symptoms in older individuals may be best measured with in vivo measures of efficiency of social attention and social cognition in social interactions rather than the accuracy of response on analog tests used in measures with younger children. Finally, a third model suggests that the social attention symptoms may not truly be a symptom of ASD. Rather, they may be best conceptualized as stemming from differences domain general attention and motivation mechanisms. The alternative argued for here that infant social attention symptoms meet all the criteria of a unique dimension of the phenotype of ASD and the bi-directional phenomena involved in social attention cannot be fully explained in terms of domain general aspects of attention development.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.6
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available