Interest towards human, animal and object in children with autism spectrum disorders: an ethological approach at home.

Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterised by attention deficits in communication and social interactions and a lack of interest in people. Data are mostly based on clinical situations. However, recent studies have shown a more mixed situation where children with ASD (ASD children) displayed interest towards humans, in both experimental and natural settings. The aim of this study was to assess the interest of ASD children in a natural standardised home setting. Here, we hypothesised that ASD children would display more interest towards animate stimuli-human and pet-when in the child's home than in the lab experimental setting. We used an ethological approach involving observations, a methodological alternative to lab static techniques, to investigate the behaviour of ninety 6- to 12-year-old ASD and typical development (TD) children. Our results were consistent with those of the literature revealing that the ASD children displayed interest towards animate stimuli as did children with TD children. Interestingly, while the ASD children showed higher interest towards humans, e.g. their parent, than the TD children did, they showed less interest towards pet compared to the TD children. Our results suggested that animals are not inherently easy to decode for ASD children, in contrast with previous experiences where a pet was regarded as a more attractive partner, easier to be understood. At last, the ASD children changed more frequently their focus point than the TD children did. These differences may be explained by the reduced attention skills in ASD or the study's context. To conclude, larger exploratory studies in natural settings conducted beyond ordinary human to human interactions are crucial for better understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved in social interactions in ASD.

Visual Attention Patterns Differ in Dog vs. Cat Interactions With Children With Typical Development or Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Visual social attention is an important part of the social life of many species, including humans, but its patterning may vary between species. Studies on human-pet relationships have revealed that visual attention is also part of such interspecific interactions and that pets are sensitive to the human visual attentional state. It has been argued that domestication and/or repeated experiences with humans have shaped and refined these decoding abilities. Little is known on how the species' evolutionary history may play a role in determining visual attention patterns during interactions, nor how the human's own social skills may influence the animal's attention patterns in human-animal interactions. In the present study, we investigated the visual attention patterns directed to the partner in dog-child and cat-child interactions in their home environment. We also compared these patterns between a group of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and children with typical development. We found that the attention patterns differed according to species, with dogs displaying more gazes and cats more glances toward their human interlocutor, while children showed gazes toward both species. Only slight differences were observed according to the developmental status of children: ASD children displayed much more visual attention with their pet cat than with their pet dog and the same amount of visual attention toward their pet, whatever the species, as typically developing (TD) children. Because humans rely a lot upon visual communication in their own social encounters, where direct gazes play a major role from early on, they may be especially sensitive to the gazing behavior of their dogs. People with ASD, with a less typical pattern of interaction, may be more comfortable with the less "invasive" short glances of cats. These results suggest not only that interspecific communication has to be associated with processing and storing the other species' ways of communicating in order to be successful but also that visual attention patterns during interactions, even when interspecific, are, for a large part, the result of the species' own evolutionary history.

Validation of the repetitive and restricted behaviour scale in autism spectrum disorders.

Repetitive and restricted behaviours represent a common problem for various psychiatric syndromes, especially in autistic spectrum disorders, and they include a wide range of heterogeneous behavioural manifestations. An accurate and standardized description of these behaviours is needed to advance the understanding of this complex and heterogeneous clinical dimension of autism. The present article reports the reliability and validity studies of a new assessment scale: the repetitive and restricted behaviour scale. 145 subjects with autism spectrum disorders were assessed using the RRB scale. The RRB scale has good interrater reliability, internal consistency and content validity. Factorial analysis produced four clinically meaningful factors, i.e. "sensorimotor stereotypies", "reaction to change", "restricted behaviours" and "modulation insufficiency". The RRB scale has good psychometric qualities and constitutes a real breakthrough towards a neurofunctional approach to autistic disorders. It should be valuable for research and treatment, and in clinical practice.

Do Animals Perceive Human Developmental Disabilities? Guinea Pigs' Behaviour with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Children with Typical Development. A Pilot Study.

Some cues used by humans and animals during human-animal interactions may have significant effects, modulating these interactions (e.g., gaze direction, heart rate). This study aimed to determine whether an animal in human-animal interactions is capable of "perceiving" its human partner's potential developmental "disabilities". To test this hypothesis, we studied guinea pigs (GP) behaviours in the presence of 44 6-to-12-year-old children with either typical development (TD children) or with autism spectrum disorders (ASD children). Thus, we recorded the GP behaviours during the entire session (to establish their time budget) and focused in particular on the onset and end of physical interactions. The GP behaviours (e.g., feeding, resting, self-grooming, exploring) were not significantly different between the two groups of children during the whole session. GP behaviours in the presence of children differed slightly when encountering ASD children versus TD children: more positive behaviours toward ASD children at the onset, more feeding and resting in the presence of TD children toward the end of an interaction. TD children showed longer-lasting interactions. One could explain this by GP curiosity toward ASD children behaviours (e.g., no marked behaviours such as attempts to touch), whereas GPs seemed calmer at the end with TD children (i.e., interacting with ASD children may be a little stressful). This partly gave support to our study's hypothesis. GPs seemed to perceive developmental disabilities during a first encounter with children and to adjust their behaviours to that of children. We discuss the issues of animal training, animals' well-being and acute stress, whether they are pets or used in animal-assisted interventions. Further studies (on pets or animal-assisted interventions) are warranted.