Studies of early interactions among infants aged 4 to 6 months furtherly diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder and their developmental trajectories and outcome at 4 years old.

The purpose of this study is to observe and analyze the social skills of infants aged 4 to 6 months later diagnosed with autism. Through the family films collected, we compared 28 children later diagnosed with autism to 28 typically developing children strictly matched on chronological age and sex. To do this, we used the social behavior assessment scale (SBAS). This scale measures the behavior of the infant (turning his head, looking, smile, vocalize ...) in response to 5 parental stimuli (1.calling by her / his name, 2.saying peek-a-boo, a vocal sound 3.Producing , 4.filmed in silent 5.simultaneous interactions with one or more persons). Then we analyzed the responses behaviors of these children with the software "the observer". Results show evidence that, contrary to infants with typical development, infants later diagnosed as autistic made less visual contact, smile or vocalize less in response to parental stimuli. However, even if the responses of autistic children are statistically different in quantity (compared to the control group), responses to parental stimuli are still present. In a second step, we studied the developmental trajectories of children with autism. Our hypothesis was that children with a low score at the SBAS would have a lower global development score than the children with a high score at the SBAS at 3 years old. Our results validate our hypothesis.