Event-related potential response to auditory social stimuli, parent-reported social communicative deficits and autism risk in school-aged children with congenital visual impairment.
Communication with visual signals, like facial expression, is important in early social development, but the question if these signals are necessary for typical social development remains to be addressed. The potential impact on social development of being born with no or very low levels of vision is therefore of high theoretical and clinical interest. The current study investigated event-related potential responses to basic social stimuli in a rare group of school-aged children with congenital visual disorders of the anterior visual system (globe of the eye, retina, anterior optic nerve). Early-latency event-related potential responses showed no difference between the VI and control group, suggesting similar initial auditory processing. However, the mean amplitude over central and right frontal channels between 280 and 320ms was reduced in response to own-name stimuli, but not control stimuli, in children with VI suggesting differences in social processing. Children with VI also showed an increased rate of autistic-related behaviours, pragmatic language deficits, as well as peer relationship and emotional problems on standard parent questionnaires. These findings suggest that vision may be necessary for the typical development of social processing across modalities.
['Bathelt|Joe|J|', 'Dale|Naomi|N|', 'de Haan|Michelle|M|']
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation D000293:Adolescent D001321:Autistic Disorder D002648:Child D005071:Evoked Potentials D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D010290:Parents D011930:Reaction Time D012306:Risk D012922:Social Change D014786:Vision Disorders
Event-related potentials Visual impairment Social development Autism spectrum disorder Childhood