infant – ASF Weekly Science Podcasts

This week, we talk to Whitney Guthrie from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who spent the last 6 years conducting the gold-standard randomized control trial that demonstrates intervention for social communication skills at 18 months shows greater effects than intervention starting at 27 months. If you wanted evidence that earlier is better, here it is! Interventions … Continue reading "When it comes to intervention, earlier is better"

This week’s podcast highlights a paper from the IBIS (infant brain imaging study) that tracks infants from 6 months to 5 years of age to examine how ASD symptoms cluster together. These infants either have a diagnosis or they don’t, or they have something which doesn’t meet diagnostic threshold but is still impairing in some … Continue reading "Is autism a yes/no diagnosis?"

The amygdala has been shown to be differently sized in autistic people – at first it is too big then it becomes smaller than typically developing people. But how early are these differences seen and does it relate to a diagnosis? The Infant Brain Imaging Study tackled this question in a recent study which compared … Continue reading "How that little amygdala makes a big difference in autism"

In February, the CDC worked with the American Academy of Pediatrics to update the developmental milestones that parents should use when referencing how their child is developing. These milestones describe what should be accomplished by times as young as 2 months and as old as 5 months. These are helpful to all parents who wonder … Continue reading "Everything you wanted to know, and more, about the revisions to the CDC developmental milestones"

This week’s podcast focuses on innovative methodologies to understand how to reach black families, understand why and when autistic people prefer not to look at faces and how interventions can improve conversation and social communication. They use culturally and racially matched mentors, old home video tapes (keep taking those!) and machine learning to look not … Continue reading "New ways to solve old problems"

Early changes in eye gaze – or the time spent looking at another person’s face compared to the scene around them – is diminished in ASD. It starts to decline at about 12 months and is linked to later social communication behaviors. But many people wonder why this is an early developing behavior worth studying? … Continue reading "Who cares about eye gaze?"