November 25, 2007
Social impairments and individual differences in social development of children with autism
Mihaela Chraif
Ejop Editor
Our Interviewed: Assist. prof. Heather Henderson from Miami University, Coral Gables, U.S.A.
Children with autism not only display social impairments but also significant individual differences in social development. Understanding the source of these divergences, as well as the nature of social impairments, is important for improved diagnosis and treatments for these children. Current theory and research suggests that individual differences in response monitoring, a specific function of the anterior cingulated cortex, may contribute to social-emotional and social-cognitive impairments and individual differences in autism.
Dr. Heather Henderson’s research is currently funded by no less than four NIH grants. Her primary work focuses on temperament influences on self-regulation and early social development. Her research on this topic has been recognized as exemplary in the 2005 edition of Annual Progress in Child Psychiatry and Child Development. She also recently published a study on self-regulation and psycho-physiology in autism in collaboration with Peter Mundy that may help to explain why some children with this syndrome have greater social impairments and lower IQs than others.
Furthermore, Dr. Henderson has contributions in studying the temperament related with children's social behavior; affective and cognitive influences on self regulation in typically and atypically developing children and developmental psychophysiology.
EJOP: Prof. Henderson, it is your first time in Romania?
Assist. Prof. Henderson: Yes, it is, it is my first trip in Romania.
EJOP: Can you tell us about your latest project and research in U.S.A.?
Assist Prof. Henderson: My research are interested in the social emotional development in children both typically developing and atypically developing. So, among typically developing and atypically developing children in my lab were studied in China and Miami over time. On the other side we were working on studying children with high functionally in autism, children who intellectually are compatible to appear but social show inability to interact with other people. So, we are trying to combine behavioral and observational measures with physiological measures to try to understand the interaction between emotion and cognition as they are related to social behavior.
EJOP: How do you explain that autism may involve a lack of connections and coordination in separate areas of the brain?
Assist. Prof. Henderson: In people with autism, the brain areas that perform complex analysis appear less likely to work together during problem solving tasks than in people who do not have the disorder, report researchers working in a network funded by the National Institutes of Health. The researchers found that communications between these higher-order centers in the brains of people with autism appear to be directly related to the thickness of the anatomical connections between them. Furthermore, in a separate report, the same research team found that, in people with autism, brain areas normally associated with visual tasks also appear to be active during language-related tasks, providing evidence to explain a bias towards visual thinking common in autism.
These findings provide support to a new theory that views autism as a failure of brain regions to communicate with each other. Thus, the findings may one day provide the basis for improved treatments for autism that stimulate communication between brain areas.
EJOP: What can you tell us about participants at a study using the Tower of London test and a brain imaging technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)? Is there a difference between the brains of people with autism and the group of people who do not have autism?
Assist. Prof. Henderson: In that study, the researchers used a brain imaging technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to view the brains of people with autism as well as a comparison group of people who do not have autism. All of the study participants were asked to complete the Tower of London test. The task involves moving three balls into a specified arrangement in an array of three receptacles. The prefrontal cortex located in the front, upper part of the brain, deals with strategic planning and problem-solving and is the executive area of the brain, in which decision making, judgment, and impulse control reside. A little further back is the parietal cortex, which controls high-level visual thinking and visual imagery, supporting the visual aspects of the problem-solving. Both the prefrontal and parietal cortex plays a critical part in performing the Tower of London test.
Thus, in the normal participants, the prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex tended to function in synchrony (increasing and decreasing their activity at the same time) while solving the Tower of London task. This suggests that the two brain areas were working together to solve the problem.
In the participants with autism, however, the two brain areas, prefrontal and parietal, were less likely to function in synchrony while working on the task.
EJOP: Dr. Henderson, in your opinion what are the suggestive symptoms of autism in early childhood?
Assist. Prof. Henderson: The symptoms most commonly reported in many studies on children were peculiarities of gaze, hearing and play. So, first of all the avoidance of eye contact is often thought to be a characteristic of children with autism. This feature is less important than the unusual quality of the gaze. Many infants do not appear to see people and so may not look people in the eye, but in the baby with autism the gaze tends to be brief and out of the corner of the eye.
Second, talking about the hearing, the peculiarities seem to be especially significant. Many children with autism have been suspected of being deaf at an early stage in their lives. Very few actually have a hearing loss, though they may not respond to their name and appear to be unaffected by audible changes in the environment. Children with autism may seem to ignore even very loud noises that would be expected to startle most ordinary children. This may be to do with a generalized lack of interest in their surroundings. It may be due to abnormalities in perception, since children with autism can appear to be especially sensitive to certain sounds. For example, a child with autism may develop a fascination for particular sounds such as that made by a friction-driven toy, or respond to the sound of a sweet being unwrapped from a considerable distance. Other sounds may appear to cause extreme distress, such as a police siren or a barking dog.
In the end, talking about the social development and play for young babies, play and social activity are closely connected. Thus, it is in this sphere of development that parents may note that their child is odd. Babies with autism may show a lack of interest in the types of play that most infants enjoy, such as those which involve social interaction with the parent. The lack of sharing activity appears to be significant. Babies with autism do not point out things of interest, do not take an active part in playing baby games and do not want to share in activities. These signs were not mentioned by the control group of parents of normally-developing children.
EJOP: Could the shyness be reinforced by the cultural environment?
Assist Prof. Henderson: Absolutely! I think a lot of children become shy because of the environmental and socialization effects: parenting and evocative effects. Over childhood and adolescence, high levels of shyness are associated with: social reticence, poor peer relationships, academic difficulties, internalizing behavior problems and negative self perception.
Children who are shy often have at least one parent who is also shy. And it is usually easy to spot children who will become shy, as they don't get over the normal stranger and separation anxiety of early childhood.
Like the child who is too aggressive and outgoing, shyness may be a problem if it is interfering in his overall functioning. For example, if your child is so shy that he won't go to school or won't ever talk to his teacher, then that could be a problem. Shyness can also be a problem if being around others causes your child to have a lot of fear or anxiety.
EJOP: Thinking of autism, how do the parents should know if their child's shyness is normal and when it is a problem and you need to get more help?
Assist Prof. Henderson: Shyness is likely to be normal if the child is otherwise growing and developing normally and: he is mostly shy in new situations and around new people, but eventually warms up after he has been around a person for a while; he has problems in larger group settings, but does well in smaller groups of people; he is eventually able to make some friends.
Shyness can be a problem when the parents could observe that it is interfering with your child's ability to make friends or if you think that he won't be able to do well in school.
Children who are shy can also be thought of as having a problem if their shyness is a big mismatch for the temperament for their parents and other family members. If a parent is shy too, but functions normally in social settings, they will often think that their child's shyness is normal too. But if the parents are very outgoing and are extroverts, they will more often see their child's shyness as a problem.
EJOP: What can the parents do to help their shy children?
Assist Prof. Henderson: Most importantly, you the parents should respect the child's shyness, talk about their feelings and fears, and don't tease or criticize them about being shy.
Other things that parents can do include could be:
• to prepare the children in advance for new activities and events. If he/she will be going to a birthday party next week, begin talking about it early and talk about that will be there, what the theme of the party will be, what activities he might do;
• to try to stick to activities with very small groups of people or just one other child. An older child, adult or family member that the child is comfortable with can also help your child feel less anxious during the activity;
• the shy children might also do better in noncompetitive activities, instead of group sports like soccer or baseball, although if he is interested, competitive sports might help them build self-esteem and friendships with teammates;
• playdates with children that are younger than your child might be helpful. When setting up playdates or activities, the parents might try to plan them at your own home, so that child doesn't have the added stress of being in a new environment; to gently encourage the children to try new things and activities. Furthermore the parents shouldn’t force or push the children to do things that they will be uncomfortable with and also to not overprotect them.
EJOP: What about your future projects, research in U.S.A.?
Assist Prof. Henderson: There are pretty comfortable what I am doing right now, but what I’m really trying to do continue this studies in examining response monitoring both behaviorally and physiologically, and to come out with new observation work and correlation research, and to try to develop experimental paradigms in observing the cognitive processing in the early years in order to understand the correlation.
EJOP: How do you see the development tendencies of research in the study of autism in U.S.A.?
Assist Prof. Henderson: Children with autism not only display social impairments but also significant individual differences in social development. Current theory and research suggest that individual differences in response monitoring, a special function of the anterior cingulated cortex, may contribute to social-emotional and social-cognitive impairments and individual differences in autism.