Quantifying latent social motivation and its associations with joint attention and language in infants at high and low likelihood for autism spectrum disorder

Social motivation—the psychobiological predisposition for social orienting, seeking social contact, and maintaining social interaction—manifests in early infancy and is hypothesized to be foundational for social communication development in typical and atypical populations. However, the lack of infant social-motivation measures has hindered delineation of associations between infant social motivation, other early-arising social abilities such as joint attention, and language outcomes. To investigate how infant social motivation contributes to joint attention and language, this study utilizes a mixed longitudinal sample of 741 infants at high (HL = 515) and low (LL = 226) likelihood for ASD. Using moderated nonlinear factor analysis (MNLFA), we incorporated items from parent-report measures to establish a novel latent factor model of infant social motivation that exhibits measurement invariance by age, sex, and familial ASD likelihood. We then examined developmental associations between 6- and 12-month social motivation, joint attention at 12–15 months, and language at 24 months of age. On average, greater social-motivation growth from 6–12 months was associated with greater initiating joint attention (IJA) and trend-level increases in sophistication of responding to joint attention (RJA). IJA and RJA were both positively associated with 24-month language abilities. There were no additional associations between social motivation and future language in our path model. These findings substantiate a novel, theoretically driven approach to modeling social motivation and suggest a developmental cascade through which social motivation impacts other foundational skills. These findings have implications for the timing and nature of intervention targets to support social communication development in infancy.

Highlights

• We describe a novel, theoretically based model of infant social motivation wherein multiple parent-reported indicators contribute to a unitary latent social-motivation factor.
• Analyses revealed social-motivation factor scores exhibited measurement invariance for a longitudinal sample of infants at high and low familial ASD likelihood.
• Social-motivation growth from ages 6–12 months is associated with better 12−15-month joint attention abilities, which in turn are associated with greater 24-month language skills.
• Findings inform timing and targets of potential interventions to support healthy social communication in the first year of life.

     

Patient Suicide: A Survey of Therapists' Reactions

A substantial proportion of therapists will at some point in their professional life experience the loss of a patient to suicide. Our aims were to assess how therapists react to patient's suicide over time and which factors contribute to the reaction. One third of the therapists, mostly women, suffer from severe distress. The impact is not different for therapists in institutional settings and therapists in private practice. The item “overall distress” immediately after the suicide predicts emotional reactions and changes in behavior. Our data suggest that identifying the severely distressed subgroup could be done using a visual analogue scale for overall distress. As a consequence, more specific and intensified help could be provided to these individuals.     

Measuring microthreats in middle and high schools: a first step toward making schools safe for all students

Current Psychology - This study examined psychometric qualities of a scale assessing middle and high school students’ experiences with negative social interactions that we call...