National Autism Conference 2020

This presentation highlights the critical role of early diagnosis and intervention in attenuating the symptoms of autism and achieving optimized outcomes. Data will be presented on research advances to quantify the ways in which infants and toddlers look at and learn about the social world around them. Using eye-tracking technology, it is now possible to measure the way infants and toddlers visually engage with the social environment, moment-by-moment. The ultimate goal of this effort is to develop objective and quantitative tools for the detection of autism in infancy, tools that might be deployed in primary care practices and which may be of benefit for other vulnerable children at risk for social-communication and language delays. This work will be contextualized in terms of recent developmental social neuroscience research with toddlers with autism, which implicated developmentally very early emerging, and evolutionarily highly conserved, mechanisms of social adaptation that set the stage for reciprocal social interaction, which in turn represent the platform for early social brain development. These mechanisms of socialization are under stringent genetic control, setting the scientific basis for parent-delivered, community-viable, early treatment in which social engagement is “engineered” via daily activities, thus impacting a child’s development during every moment of social interaction. Effective screening of infants would be unethical without a clinical infrastructure providing access to family support and early intervention for those screened positive. Through a collaboration with Dr. Amy Wetherby, we are now establishing tools and procedures for the full integration of primary care physicians and early intervention providers with the goal of establishing a new system of healthcare delivery for infants & toddlers with autism spectrum disorders. This system deploys “Early Social Interaction” as its modality of parent-delivered treatment.

Credits: Act 48, SW, Psych, PT, OT, BACB, Infant/Toddler, ASHA

Session video removed upon presenter request.

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