Background: Although a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) appears to be stable in children as young as age three, few studies have explored stability of a diagnosis in younger children. ...Predictive value of diagnostic tools for toddlers and patterns of symptom change are important considerations for clinicians making early diagnoses. Most findings come from high‐risk samples, but reports on children screened in community settings are also needed.
Methods: Stability of diagnosis and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule – Toddler Module (ADOS‐T) classifications and scores was examined across two time points in a sample of 82 children identified through the FIRST WORDS® Project. Children received two comprehensive diagnostic evaluations at average ages of 19.39 (SD = 2.12) and 36.89 (SD = 3.85) months.
Results: Stability was 100% when confirming and ruling out a diagnosis of ASD based on a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation that included clinic and home observations, although diagnosis was initially deferred for 17% of the sample. Receiver Operating Characteristic curves revealed excellent sensitivity and acceptable specificity for the ADOS‐T compared to concurrent diagnosis. Logistic regressions indicated good predictive value of initial ADOS‐T scores for follow‐up diagnosis. Finally, both ASD and Non‐ASD children demonstrated a decrease in Social Affect scores (i.e., improvement), whereas children with ASD demonstrated an increase in Restricted and Repetitive Behavior scores (i.e., worsening), changes that were accounted for by nonverbal developmental level in mixed model analyses.
Conclusions: Short‐term stability was documented for children diagnosed at 19 months on average, although a minority of children initially showed unclear diagnostic presentations. Findings highlight utility of the ADOS‐T in making early diagnoses and predicting follow‐up diagnoses. Children with ASD demonstrated improvement in social communication behaviors and unfolding of repetitive behaviors, suggesting that certain early patterns of change in symptoms may be characteristic of ASD.
COVID-19-related lockdowns and preschool closures resulted in many young children spending all their time at home. Some parents had to manage child care while working from home, and increased demands ...may have led them to experience considerable stress. Evidence indicates that among parents with young children, those who had pre-existing mental and physical conditions adapted less well than other parents. We considered associations between parental well-being and the home learning environment for young children.
We leveraged data from the nationally representative China Family Panel Studies. We analyzed longitudinal data collected before (2018) and during (2020) the pandemic. Participants were parents of 1,155 preschoolers (aged 3-5 years in 2020). Moderated mediation models were conducted. Maternal and paternal psychological well-being, depression, physical health, and physical illness in 2018 and 2020 were predictors. The frequency of marital and intergenerational conflicts in 2020 were mediators. Primary caregiver-reported engagement in home learning activities and family educational expenditure and parent-reported time spent on child care in 2020 were outcome variables. The number of COVID-19 cases in each province 3 months before the 2020 assessment was the moderator. Child, parental, and household characteristics and urbanicity were covariates.
Controlling for covariates, improvements in parental psychological well-being predicted more home learning activities and increases in paternal depression predicted less time spent by fathers on child care. Negative changes in maternal physical health predicted less family educational expenditure and mothers spending more time on child care. Family conflicts mediated the association between maternal physical illness in 2018 and family educational expenditure. The number of COVID-19 cases in a province (i) was positively associated with mothers spending more time on child care, (ii) moderated the association of improvements in maternal physical health and mothers spending less time on child care, and (iii) moderated the association of family conflicts and more family educational expenditure.
The findings indicate that decreased parental psychological and physical well-being foretells reductions in monetary and non-monetary investment in early learning and care at home. Regional pandemic risk undermines maternal investment in early learning and care, especially for those with pre-existing physical conditions.
Background
Assessment of early childhood development programme effectiveness in South Africa is hampered by a lack of suitable measures that account for variations in cultural and socio‐economic ...backgrounds and can be administered by non‐professionals. This contribution reports the standardisation of the South African Early Learning Outcomes Measure (ELOM), an instrument designed for population level monitoring of the developmental status of children aged 50–69 months and for evaluation of early learning programmes.
Methods
The development of the ELOM was informed by South Africa's National Curriculum Framework from Birth to Four and its National Early Learning and Development Standards. ELOM items were drawn from reliable and valid instruments, particularly those used in Africa and other developing regions and were clustered in five domains: gross motor development, fine motor coordination and visual motor integration, emergent numeracy and mathematics, cognition and executive functioning, emergent literacy and language. The ELOM was standardised on a sample of 1,331 children aged 50–69 months, from five South African official languages and five socio‐economic strata. Item Response Theory techniques were used to establish reliability, validity, and differential item functioning.
Results
Confirmatory Factor Analysis established that ELOM domains are unidimensional and internally consistent. Items discriminate reliably between more and less able children and do not discriminate unfairly between children of the same ability from different language backgrounds. Socio‐economic gradients were evident in children's performance. South African Early Learning Development Standards (ELDS) based on standard scores were developed and set at the 60th percentile of the sample standard score distribution.
Conclusions
This research produced the first South African, age‐validated population‐level standardised instrument that can be administered relatively cheaply by trained non‐professionals. This will facilitate the assessment of the efficacy of early learning programmes in enabling children to reach ELDS prior to entering Grade R and track progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 4.2.
Retrospective studies indicate 2 major classes of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) onset: early and later, after a period of relatively healthy development. This prospective, longitudinal study ...examined social, language, and motor trajectories in 235 children with and without a sibling with autism, ages 6–36 months. Children were grouped as: ASD identified by 14 months, ASD identified after 14 months, and no ASD. Despite groups' initial similar developmental level at 6 months, ASD groups exhibited atypical trajectories thereafter. Impairment from 14 to 24 months was greater in the Early-ASD than the Later-ASD group, but comparable at 36 months. Developmental plateau and regression occurred in some children with ASD, regardless of timing of ASD diagnosis. Findings indicate a preclinical phase of varying duration for ASD.
BackgroundInequalities in early childhood development (ECD) tend to persist into adulthood and amplify across the life course. To date, little research on inequalities in early childhood care and ...development in low/middle-income countries has been available to guide governments, donors and civil society in identifying which young children and families should be targeted by policies and programmes to improve nurturing care that could prevent them from being left behind.MethodsUsing data from 135 Demographic and Health Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys between 2010 and 2018, we assessed levels and trends of inequalities in exposure to risks of stunting or extreme poverty (under age 5; levels in 85 and trends in 40 countries), early attendance of early care and education programmes (36–59 months; 65 and 17 countries), home stimulation (36–59 months; 62 and 14 countries) and child development according to the Early Childhood Development Index (36–59 months; 60 and 13 countries). Inequalities within countries were measured as the absolute gap in three domains—child gender, household wealth and residential area—and compared across regions and country income groups.Results63% of children were not exposed to stunting or extreme poverty; 39% of 3–4-year olds attended early care and education; and 69% received a level of reported home stimulation defined as adequate. Sub-Saharan Africa had the lowest proportion of children not exposed to stunting or extreme poverty (45%), attending early care and education (24%) and receiving adequate home stimulation (47%). Substantial gaps in all indicators were found across country income groups, residential areas and household wealth categories. There were no significant reductions in gaps over time for a subset of countries with available data in two survey rounds.ConclusionsAvailable data indicate large inequalities in early experiences and outcomes. Efforts of reducing these inequalities must focus on the poorest families and those living in rural areas in the poorest countries. Improving and applying population-level measurements on ECD in more countries over time are important for ensuring equal opportunities for young children globally.
Visual imprinting is a learning process whereby young animals come to prefer a visual stimulus after exposure to it (training). The available evidence indicates that the intermediate medial ...mesopallium (IMM) in the domestic chick forebrain is a site of memory formation during visual imprinting. We have studied the role of Src, an important non-receptor tyrosine kinase, in memory formation. Amounts of total Src (Total-Src) and its two phosphorylated forms, tyrosine-416 (activated, 416P-Src) and tyrosine-527 (inhibited, 527P-Src), were measured 1 and 24 h after training in the IMM and in a control brain region, the posterior pole of nidopallium (PPN). One hour after training, in the left IMM, we observed a positive correlation between the amount of 527P-Src and learning strength that was attributable to learning, and there was also a positive correlation between 416P-Src and learning strength that was attributable to a predisposition to learn readily. Twenty-four hours after training, the amount of Total-Src increased with learning strength in both the left and right IMM, and amount of 527P-Src increased with learning strength only in the left IMM; both correlations were attributable to learning. A further, negative, correlation between learning strength and 416P-Src/Total-Src in the left IMM reflected a predisposition to learn. No learning-related changes were found in the PPN control region. We suggest that there are two pools of Src; one of them in an active state and reflecting a predisposition to learn, and the second one in an inhibited condition, which increases as a result of learning. These two pools may represent two or more signaling pathways, namely, one pathway downstream of Src activated by tyrosine-416 phosphorylation and another upstream of Src, keeping the enzyme in an inactivated state via phosphorylation of tyrosine-527.
Background: Recent models of the early emergence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) propose that infant intrinsic risk susceptibilities in behaviour may be amplified by interaction within the early ...social environment into an increasingly atypical developmental trajectory. This study examines whether 6‐ and 12‐month parent–infant interactions in at‐risk siblings differ from those with low‐risk and whether – in at‐risk siblings – such interactions predict later 3‐year classification of ASD or no ASD.
Method: Within the British Autism Study of Infant Siblings (BASIS), 6‐min videotaped episodes of parent–infant free play in infants at 6–10 months (45 at‐risk siblings and 47 low‐risk siblings) and 12–15 months (43 at‐risk siblings and 48 low‐risk siblings) in a laboratory setting were rated on the Manchester Assessment of Caregiver‐Infant Interaction (MACI), blind to participant information. Standard tests were administered for concurrent behavioural signs of ASD features and developmental level. Systematic consensus diagnostic classification of ASD was made at 3 years for the at‐risk siblings.
Results: Parent nondirectiveness and sensitive responsiveness differed in relation to ASD/risk status (at‐risk ASD, at‐risk no‐ASD and low‐risk) at both 6 and 12 months. At 6 months, infant liveliness was lower in the at‐risk groups; at 12 months, infant attentiveness to parent and positive affect were lower in the at‐risk group later diagnosed with ASD. Dyadic mutuality and intensity of engagement showed a group effect at 12 months. Dyadic mutuality, infant positive affect and infant attentiveness to parent at 12 months (but not 6 months) predicted 3‐year ASD outcome, whereas infant ASD‐related behavioural atypicality did not.
Conclusions: This is the first prospective evidence that early dyadic interaction between at‐risk infants and their parents is associated with later diagnostic outcome in ASD. Possible explanations for these findings and their theoretical implications are considered.
Numerous studies from developmental psychology have suggested that human symbolic representation of numbers is built upon the evolutionally old capacity for representing quantities that is shared ...with other species. Substantial research from mathematics education also supports the idea that mathematical concepts are best learned through their corresponding physical representations. We argue for an independent pathway to learning “big” multi-digit symbolic numbers that focuses on the symbol system itself. Across five experiments using both between- and within-subject designs, we asked preschoolers to identify written multi-digit numbers with their spoken names in a two-alternative-choice-test or to indicate the larger quantity between two written numbers. Results showed that preschoolers could reliably map spoken number names to written forms and compare the magnitudes of two written multi-digit numbers. Importantly, these abilities were not related to their non-symbolic representation of quantities. These findings have important implications for numerical cognition, symbolic development, teaching, and education.
In the Spring of 2020, COVID-19 forced school buildings to close across the United States. As a result, many early learning programs and elementary schools moved their services online. Families of ...young children with challenging behaviors receiving complex educational and behavioral services in traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms were suddenly required to work closely with educators to support their children’s academic, social-emotional, and behavioral progress. This study used a qualitative approach to examine families’ experiences with children’s challenging behavior, online instruction, and behavior support during COVID-19 school building closures. Findings underscore important themes related to families’ perceptions of child challenging behavior at home, challenges with children’s meaningful participation in online instruction, families’ perceived responsibilities and priorities, and future recommendations. Implications for educators are discussed.
Sensory symptoms are prevalent in autism spectrum disorder but little is known about the early developmental patterns of these symptoms. This study examined the development of sensory symptoms and ...the relationship between sensory symptoms and adaptive functioning during early childhood. Three groups of children were followed across three time points from 2 to 8 years of age: autism spectrum disorder, developmental delay, and typical development. At each time point, parents filled out questionnaires regarding their child’s sensory symptoms and adaptive functioning. At the initial time point, parents of children with autism spectrum disorder reported more sensory symptoms in their children than parents in the typical development group. Parents in the autism spectrum disorder group reported more sensory symptoms than parents in the developmental delay group within smell, taste, and auditory domains. While the typical development group decreased in reported sensory symptoms across the study period, the clinical groups demonstrated no significant change across assessment points. Sensory symptoms for all groups were not independently predictive of adaptive functioning when verbal mental age was also included in the model. The young age range at the initial assessment and pattern of results suggest that sensory symptoms are present early in the etiology of autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disorders and remain stable over time.
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