A new study of infants who are at high risk for developing autism shows that an early social difficulty with their parents could portend a future autism diagnosis.
University of Miami researchers have found a strong behavioral signal to indicate which infants who have an older sibling with an autism will themselves be diagnosed with autism as they grow older.
Early recognition of an insecure-resistant attachment—measured by how 15-month-old babies react when they are briefly separated then reunited with a parent—won’t prevent a future autism diagnosis. But, the researchers said, it could lead to interventions that help infants who will develop an autism form more secure social relationships, which is often difficult for people with the neurodevelopmental disorder.
“Insecure attachment patterns are generally associated with less optimal behavioral and emotional developmental outcomes later in life than secure attachments. And, there are critical interventions designed around attachment security—but not for infants at high risk for autism,” said Katherine Martin, the lead author, who initiated the research as a Ph.D. candidate under the guidance of psychology professor Daniel Messinger.
“This new study,” Martin continued, “suggests the need for interventions for high-risk infants that specifically focus on sensitizing parents to social and emotional communication behaviors in infants identified as having insecure-resistant attachments. This would hopefully be a means to decreasing resistant attachment behaviors and lowering the obstacles to acquiring social competencies, which are already impaired in children with autism.”
Many babies cry or show other signs of distress when a parent departs and they are left behind with a stranger. But secure babies are soothed when the parent returns. That, however, is not the case with babies classified with insecure-resistant attachments.
“They not only cry when the parent leaves, but they never really settle down when the parent returns, which indicates that the infants are not confident in their ability to be calmed,” said Messinger, who has been studying the infant siblings of older children diagnosed with autism for 15 years.
