Motor atypicalities in infancy are associated with general developmental level at 2 years, but not autistic symptoms

Abstract

Atypical motor development has frequently been reported in infants at elevated likelihood for autism spectrum disorder. However, no previous study has used detailed motion capture technology to compare infant siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder and infant siblings with no familial history of autism spectrum disorder. We investigated reaching movements during an interceptive action task in 10-month-old infants using kinematic data with high spatiotemporal resolution. The results indicated that several measures were different in infants at elevated likelihood. However, longitudinal analyses revealed that while specific infant motor measures (e.g. number of movement units) were related to broad measures of general developmental level in toddlerhood, the associations with later autism spectrum disorder symptomatology were not significant. These findings confirm that some aspects of motor functioning are atypical in infants at elevated likelihood for autism spectrum disorder, but provide no support for the view that these issues are specifically linked to autism spectrum disorder symptoms, but may rather reflect neurodevelopment more generally. Lay abstract Atypicalities in motor functioning are often observed in later born infant siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder. The goal of our study was to investigate motor functioning in infants with and without familial history of autism spectrum disorder. Specifically, we investigated how infants catch a ball that is rolling toward them following a non-straight path, a task that requires both efficient planning and execution. Their performance was measured using detailed three-dimensional motion capture technology. We found that several early motor functioning measures were different in infants with an older autistic sibling compared to controls. However, these early motor measures were not related to autistic symptoms at the age of 2 years. Instead, we found that some of the early motor measures were related to their subsequent non-social, general development. The findings of our study help us understand motor functioning early in life and how motor functioning is related to other aspects of development.