A study published in Nature, suggests that a baby's gaze may show signs that autism will develop at a later time.
However, a parent or a physician's speculations are not enough to diagnose a baby, as special eye-tracking technology is used to examine the baby's eyes, mouth and body movement.
Babies that developed autism spent less time focusing on people's eyes between the ages of 2 and 6 months. They paid more attention to a person's mouth and body movements compared to babies that did not develop autism at all.
“Documenting that there’s a developmental difference between 2 and 6 months is a major, major finding,” said Dr. Lonnie Zwaigenbaum, a pediatrician and autism researcher at the University of Alberta.
The number of babies studied was relatively small, so the study is continuing using more infants and hopefully developing a correlation between the two.
By: Anel Herrera
No comments:
Post a Comment