Autism and the social brain

Article By:

Volkmar, Fred R. Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Last reviewed:2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.YB133330

Since Leo Kanner's first description of autism in 1943, social difficulties have been recognized as one of the two hallmarks of the condition. Kanner emphasized that the insensitivity to social interaction stood, in some ways, in marked contrast to a significant oversensitivity to the nonsocial world, for example, marked responses to small changes in the nonsocial environment. The observed difficulties in processing social information occur in multiple sensory modalities and are of very early onset. Parents often become concerned about unusual patterns of social interaction and/or lack of social interest in the first year of their child's life, and indeed retrospective reviews of videotapes of first birthday parties of children who were later diagnosed with autism show that these children devoted less attention to the faces and voices of others. In these children, by 2 years of age, deficits in communication, lack of imitation, poor eye contact, and limited joint attention (shared focus) are often striking. A growing body of work suggests that difficulties in these specific social processes probably underlie many subsequent problems in communication, attention, learning, and other aspects of development and that early intervention that focuses on these difficulties is associated with a significantly improved outcome. Although social difficulties persist over time, gains are typically made over the course of development; however, social vulnerabilities remain substantial even when the individual makes significant gains in communication and overall intelligence.

The content above is only an excerpt.