A study that looks at "Early Identification of ASD Using Social-Emotional Indicators'  focus on brain development that occurs in six-month- old infants.  A new study reports that three-month-old infants may process objects in their environment using social cues. Science Daily reports on this study, conducted by researchers from Hunter College and the Mac Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brains Scientists.

In the study, infants viewed images of people looking at new objects with either neutral or fearful expressions. The electrophysiological brain activity of the infants revealed that processing new objects depended on the emotional signals adults presented. This is contrary to the decades-long held idea that social reference develops only when infants are about a year old.

Tricia Striano of Hunter College states that “Not only do these findings offer new insight as to how the young infant brain processes communicative social signals, but these advancements are also important in eventually being able to target when infants may be at risk for atypical communicative developments such as autism."

Even when infants don’t have the behavior to show us how they process their environment, brain measures tell us how they do. Typically developing infant brains process these social cues early, but children with autism often don’t pay attention to social signals.