A team of psychologists from the University of Milano-Bicocca and the IRÇS E. Medea Scientific Institute, at the Child Psychopathology Unit in Italy, discovered an indicator that can detect autism spectrum disorder in children as young as seven months old.
In the study, published online in PLoS ONE, the research team looked at children who were at risk for developing the disorder and compared their results with children who were not at risk. The researchers then followed the children for two years to see if any of them developed the disorder.
It is noted that diagnosing the disorder in children under the age of three becomes difficult because they have not yet developed communication and speech skills, so it is not possible for them to answer questions and "facilitate" the diagnosis.
Nineteen infants younger than 19 months old (and their parents) were selected. All of the infants had older siblings diagnosed with autism, which the researchers say puts them in a high-risk group. Another 7 infants (and their parents) who were not at risk of developing autism spectrum disorder participated in the study.
All the babies were given statistical learning tests and followed over the next two years to see if they would develop autism spectrum disorders.
The researchers conducted a series of tests that involved showing each infant photos and observing how they responded to similar photo patterns in other photos. This is an approach based on statistical learning, which is currently used in various diagnostic methodologies for older children.
The researchers found that children at high risk for developing the disorder had greater difficulty with specific visual tests, while those with the worst results were more likely to be at risk of developing autism spectrum disorder later in life.
The research team acknowledges that their findings are preliminary, noting that more research is needed to confirm that this type of statistical testing can be used to diagnose autism in infants.
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