Poster #65 - Fall after fall: Patterns of falling in infants with typical vs. elevated likelihood for autism

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Learning to walk reshapes how infants move through the world, but it also increases opportunities for errors. In neurotypical development, research has demonstrated that falling is unlikely to deter infants from walking due to its low cost for injury but high reward for exploration. But little is known about falling in infants with delays and differences in motor skills. Infants with an elevated likelihood (EL) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have demonstrated differences in motor development that may impact how they experience falling and its consequences. Compared to their peers with a typical likelihood (TL) for ASD, EL infants take longer to transition from less to more advanced postural skills (e.g., sitting to standing) and as a result, may differ in rates of falling or in how they recover from falling. Thus, we examined falling (and its context) in EL and TL infants to ask if falling may provide different opportunities for movement and exploration.

We observed 89 12-month-old infants (29 TL, 60 EL) during everyday activities at home for approximately 45 minutes. At 36 months, EL infants were evaluated and classified with either an ASD diagnosis (EL-ASD, n=16), language delay without ASD (EL-LD, n=16), or no diagnosis (EL-ND, n=28). From each video, coders identified all infant falls (i.e., a loss of balance) and noted: (1) infants’ postures before and after each fall and (2) whether infants were moving before and after each fall. We then examined the 5 seconds following falls and categorized infants’ behaviors as: (1) recover (returning to their pre-fall posture), (2) stay (remaining where they fell) and (3) transition (switching to a different type of movement).

Falls were examined as rates per 45 minutes. Preliminary findings (n=20, 5 infants per outcome group) indicate a significant difference between outcome groups in the rate of falling during everyday play at home, such that EL-ASD infants were twice as likely to experience falls compared to EL-ND and TL infants (ps < .05; Figure 1). There were no group differences in the postures from which infants fell, or in whether infants were moving before each fall (ps > .05). No significant differences were found for the postures infants landed in or whether they moved after the fall, except for TL and EL-LD infants, who were significantly more likely to fall into a sitting posture than EL-ND infants (ps < 0.05). There were also no significant differences between outcome groups for whether infants recovered, stayed, or transitioned after falls (Figure 2).

While EL-ASD infants displayed an increased fall rate in comparison to their peers, no significant differences were found between outcome groups for how infants fell and what they did following the fall. Taken together, this suggests that delays in postural and motor development for EL-ASD infants do not seem to influence the potential consequences of falling, but may increase the rate of falls. Future studies should expand on the possible opportunities falls may, or may not, provide, especially in infants with possible differences in motor skills.

Authors

• Kaitlyn B Cortez, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Madyson R Diehl, University of Pittsburgh

• Joshua L Schneider, University of Pittsburgh

• Samantha Plate, University of Pittsburgh

• Jana M Iverson, Boston University