Visual statistical learning in preverbal infants at a higher likelihood of autism and its association with later social communication skills

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 19; no. 5; p. e0300274
• Main Authors: Bettoni, Roberta, Cantiani, Chiara, Riboldi, Elena Maria, Molteni, Massimo, Bulf, Hermann, Riva, Valentina
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 15.05.2024; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Analysis; Autism; Autism Spectrum Disorder - physiopathology; Autism Spectrum Disorder - psychology; Autistic Disorder - physiopathology; Autistic Disorder - psychology; Babies; Behavior; Biology and Life Sciences; Biomarkers; Child, Preschool; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive ability; Communication; Communication skills; Development; Female; Habituation; Habituation (learning); Humans; Infant; Infants; Learning; Learning - physiology; Longitudinal studies; Male; Medical research; Medicine and Health Sciences; Medicine, Experimental; People and Places; Psychological aspects; Psychological research; Regression analysis; Risk factors; Social Sciences; Social Skills; Social skills in children; Statistical analysis; Statistics; Visual discrimination learning; Visual learning; Visual tasks; Italy; Canada
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0300274

Visual statistical Learning (SL) allows infants to extract the statistical relationships embedded in a sequence of elements. SL plays a crucial role in language and communication competencies and has been found to be impacted in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This study aims to investigate visual SL in infants at higher likelihood of developing ASD (HL-ASD) and its predictive value on autistic-related traits at 24–36 months. At 6 months of age, SL was tested using a visual habituation task in HL-ASD and neurotypical (NT) infants. All infants were habituated to a visual sequence of shapes containing statistically predictable patterns. In the test phase, infants viewed the statistically structured, familiar sequence in alternation with a novel sequence that did not contain any statistical information. HL-ASD infants were then evaluated at 24–36 months to investigate the associations between visual SL and ASD-related traits. Our results showed that NT infants were able to learn the statistical structure embedded in the visual sequences, while HL-ASD infants showed different learning patterns. A regression analysis revealed that SL ability in 6-month-old HL-ASD infants was related to social communication and interaction abilities at 24–36 months of age. These findings indicate that early differences in learning visual statistical patterns might contribute to later social communication skills.