Associations of Sensory Patterns and Emerging Asd Symptomology in 9-Month-Old Infants

Over 90% of children with ASD experience atypical sensory experiences, but no single sensory pattern is unique to ASD. Infants at an elevated likelihood for ASD (EL infants), for example siblings of children with ASD and preterm infants (PT infants), have been found to experience atypical sensory experiences early in life. There are currently few studies investigating sensory experiences in early infancy and their associations with emerging ASD symptomology. The current study characterized sensory patterns in 9-month-old infants with an elevated familial likelihood for ASD and preterm infants and determined differences between these two clinical groups. Additionally, the study determined the association of specific sensory patterns on emerging ASD symptomology across groups. Our findings revealed that there was no difference in the proportion of EL infants and PT infants who experience atypical sensory processing profiles than typical sensory processing profiles, X2 (1, N = 61) = 0.40, p=0.53. Within the groups, atypical avoidance and atypical seeking had the highest incidence across the four sensory profiles. Additionally, across both groups, infants with at least one atypical sensory processing profile were not predicted to have more features of ASD at 12-months, 12-months, R2 = 0.00, F(1,31) = 0.00, p=0.97. Our results suggest that EL infants and PT infants exhibit similar sensory behaviors at 9-months and have similar early ASD features at 12-months.