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Increased Prevalence of Unusual Sensory Behaviors in Infants at Risk for, and Teens with, Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

The current study investigated the prevalence and pattern of unusual sensory behaviors (USBs) in teens with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and infants (3–36 months) at risk for ASD. From two different sites (UCSD and UConn), caregivers of infants at high (n = 32) and low risk (n = 33) for ASD, and teenagers with (n = 12) and without ASD (n = 11), completed age-appropriate Sensory Profile questionnaires (Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile; Dunn 2002; Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile; Brown and Dunn 2002). The results show that high-risk infants and teenagers with ASD exhibit higher-than-typical prevalence of USBs. Results of our distribution analyses investigating the direction of sensory atypicalities (greater-than-typical vs. less-than-typical) revealed a fair degree of consistency amongst teens, however, USB patterns were more varied in high-risk infants.

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Notes

  1. Our results showed very similar effects whether these two teens were included versus excluded, and we therefore decided to include them. Including them was also a conservative decision since the results were somewhat more significant when the two subjects were excluded.

  2. Note that we could not perform a Monte Carlo simulation for this distribution analysis, since there was no obvious single “observed” group difference value to test in the model (as there was when we computed group difference in “prevalence of atypicalities”, above). We do not, however, expect the unequal time points between high- and low-risk infants to affect the three-category analysis.

  3. As we mention in the “Introduction”, it is interesting and important to point out that, due to the nature of the quadrant analysis combining data across all perceptual domains, it is possible to get seemingly contradictory results across the different quadrants, for example, atypically high frequencies of both sensation avoiding and sensation seeking. If this had occurred in the data (although it did not), it would presumably be driven by a different pattern of behaviors occurring in the different perceptual domains. For instance, an individual (or group of subjects) could exhibit high frequencies of sensation avoiding behaviors in the auditory domain and high frequencies of sensation seeking behaviors in the visual domain (Dunn 1997).

  4. Being that the perceptual domains are comprised of questions drawn from the various quadrants, it is difficult to speak to the exact pattern of behaviors that were seen in the perceptual domains for our high-risk sample.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grant R01HD052804 (KRD) and RO3HD060809 (AB) from NICHD. We would also like to thank County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency, Public Health Services, and Office of Vital Records for providing us access to birth records, from which we recruit our infant subjects.

Author contributions

HVE participated in data coordination/collection at the UCSD site, conducted data analyses/interpretation of the combined dataset from UCSD and UConn/UD as well as the writing of the manuscript. MK participated in data coordination/collection and data analyses/interpretation at the UConn/UD site. SS participated in data coordination/collection and data analyses/interpretation at the UConn/UD site and reviewed the penultimate draft of the manuscript. SC assisted in the coordination of the study and assisted in the collection of the data at the UCSD site. AB conceived the UConn/UD study and offered oversight to the data coordination/collections at the UConn/UD site, conducted the data analyses of the combined dataset, and helped write the manuscript. KD conceived the UCSD study, provided oversight of the data coordination/collections at the UCSD site, helped with data analyses/interpretation of the combined dataset as well as writing of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gillman Dr., #0109, La Jolla, CA, 92093-0109, USA

    Hannah M. Van Etten, Shereen J. Cohen & Karen R. Dobkins

  2. Vanderbilt University, 230 Appleton Place #552, Jesup Room #205, Nashville, TN, 37203, USA

    Maninderjit Kaur

  3. Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, 400076, India

    Sudha M. Srinivasan

  4. Department of Physical Therapy, University of Delaware, 540 S College Ave., Newark, DE, 19713, USA

    Anjana Bhat

  5. Department of Kinesiology, Physical Therapy Program, University of Connecticut, 358 Mansfield Rd, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA

    Anjana Bhat

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  1. Hannah M. Van Etten
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Correspondence to Karen R. Dobkins.

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Van Etten, H.M., Kaur, M., Srinivasan, S.M. et al. Increased Prevalence of Unusual Sensory Behaviors in Infants at Risk for, and Teens with, Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 47, 3431–3445 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3227-9

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