Bussu, Giorgia; Jones, Emily J. H.; Charman, Tony; Johnson, Mark H.; Buitelaar, Jan K.; Blasi, Anna; Baron-Cohen, Simon; Bedford, Rachael; Bolton, Patrick; Chandler, Susie; Cheung, Celeste; Davies, Kim; Fernandes, Janice; Gammer, Isobel; Garwood, Holly; Giraud, Jeanne; Gui, Anna; Hudry, Kristelle; Lieu, Michelle; Mercure, Evelyne; Lloyd-Fox, Sarah; Maris, Helen; O’Hara, Louise; Pickles, Andrew; Ribeiro, Helena; Salomone, Erica; Tucker, Leslie and Volein, Agnes. 2019. Latent trajectories of adaptive behaviour in infants at high and low familial risk for autism spectrum disorder. Molecular Autism, 10(1), [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Background
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterised by persisting difficulties in everyday functioning. Adaptive behaviour is heterogeneous across individuals with ASD, and it is not clear to what extent early development of adaptive behaviour relates to ASD outcome in toddlerhood. This study aims to identify subgroups of infants based on early development of adaptive skills and investigate their association with later ASD outcome.

Methods
Adaptive behaviour was assessed on infants at high (n = 166) and low (n = 74) familial risk for ASD between 8 and 36 months using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS-II). The four domains of VABS-II were modelled in parallel using growth mixture modelling to identify distinct classes of infants based on adaptive behaviour. Then, we associated class membership with clinical outcome and ASD symptoms at 36 months and longitudinal measures of cognitive development.

Results
We observed three classes characterised by decreasing trajectories below age-appropriate norms (8.3%), stable trajectories around age-appropriate norms (73.8%), and increasing trajectories reaching average scores by age 2 (17.9%). Infants with declining adaptive behaviour had a higher risk (odds ratio (OR) = 4.40; confidence interval (CI) 1.90; 12.98) for ASD and higher parent-reported symptoms in the social, communication, and repetitive behaviour domains at 36 months. Furthermore, there was a discrepancy between adaptive and cognitive functioning as the class with improving adaptive skills showed stable cognitive development around average scores.

Conclusions
Findings confirm the heterogeneity of trajectories of adaptive functioning in infancy, with a higher risk for ASD in toddlerhood linked to a plateau in the development of adaptive functioning after the first year of life.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-019-0264-6
Additional Information:	This work has received funding from the Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions of the European Community’s Horizon 2020 Program under grant agreement n°642996 (Brainview); the UK Medical Research Council (G0701484 & MR/K021389/1); the BASIS funding consortium led by Autistica, and EU-AIMS (the Innovative Medicines Initiative joint undertaking grant agreement no. 115300, resources of which are composed of financial contributions from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) and EFPIA companies’ in-kind contribution).
Keywords:	Autism, Trajectories, Adaptive behaviour, Infant siblings, Subgroups
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Psychology
Dates:	Date Event 27 February 2019 Accepted 15 March 2019 Published
Item ID:	27109
Date Deposited:	10 Oct 2019 09:33
Last Modified:	11 Jun 2021 05:09
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/27109

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