Andrew Meltzoff & Patricia Kuhl: Joint attention to mind
Husband and wife research team Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl have shown that learning is a fundamentally social process, beginning in early infancy.
Husband and wife research team Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl have shown that learning is a fundamentally social process, beginning in early infancy.
Robots may be able to help treat children with autism when qualified therapists aren’t available, according to a study published 3 December in IEEE Translational Neural Systems Rehabilitation Engingeering.
Children with autism have trouble imitating others’ actions, a trait that may be linked to their poor motor skills, according to a study published 10 September in PLoS One.
Emerging technologies and software may help assess the subtle behaviors, such as gaze or social gestures, that go awry in children with autism, researchers said at the Engineering and Autism conference earlier this month.
Sophisticated eye-tracking tools and other technologies are making it easier to record and analyze social interactions, and may help researchers study social deficits in children with autism. Researchers debuted some of these tools 28 September at the Engineering and Autism conference in Los Angeles.
Home videos suggest that babies later diagnosed with autism gesture differently than typically developing babies or those with other developmental disorders.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have for the first time identified brain regions activated by joint attention, the process in which two people direct their attention to the same object, person or topic of conversation. The findings appeared 16 April in Human Brain Mapping.
Toddlers with autism who receive behavioral interventions that improve joint attention — engaging and following others’ focus — have better language ability five years later than do controls, according to a study published in May in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Two new studies on oxytocin, the so-called ‘trust hormone,’ suggest new avenues for using the drug to treat autism.
Social impairments in autism are likely a consequence of deficits in social motivation that start early in life and have profound developmental consequences, says psychologist Robert Schultz.