Blinking Study Sheds New Light on My Anecdotal Findings as a Parent

January 10, 2012 by autismsciencefoundation

ASF welcomes Jerri Sparks Kaiser as our newest Science Writer. Jerri, a parent of four children, one of whom has autism, will blog for ASF from a parent’s perspective about the latest autism research. A former Congressional Press Secretary, Jerri is an experienced science writer and has written specifically about autism for many years. Before her life in PR, she was a trained researcher having earned her B.A. in Psychology at UCLA. She currently lives with her family in New York.

By Jerri Sparks Kaiser

A promising new study about blinking rates in autistic children caught my attention this week. As the mother of an autistic son and three other typically developing children, I can attest to the differences in their social behavior but it had never occurred to me to measure and compare their blinking rates.

The new study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that when autistic individuals watch a video of a boy and girl playing they decrease their blinking rate when watching the physical movements whereas typically developing individuals did just the opposite – they decreased their blinking rate while watching the emotional content. That is, typically developing children are intrigued by emotional interactions (since decreased blinking rate indicates interest) and autistic individuals show interest in the physical interactions.

This makes perfect sense to me. When my son was an infant I was studying psychology at UCLA and I kept notes of his daily life from conception until he was about 3 ½ years old.

One thing I noted was how when anyone was upset he watched their mouths move instead of their entire face. He rarely looked at their eyes. It was as if he couldn’t hear the conversation so he found the silent movements of their mouths humorous. He would stare intently at people’s mouths and then begin laughing. Later on he would become excited by this and tip forward on his toes, waving his arms excitedly as he watched.

I remember thinking he might be deaf so I had his hearing checked but it was fine. In fact, Jared can hear very well, from distant trains to the fluorescent bulbs in the kitchen. For some reason though he compartmentalizes his sensory input, instead of processing the whole he catches the visual, then the audio. He would watch sand fall in front of his face and ignore my pleas to come out of the sandbox. His visual system has always over rode his auditory, so much so that I began covering his eyes if I wanted him to pay attention to what I was saying.

This study could lead to much earlier diagnosis and treatment of autism. Infants have gaze patterns at birth, an early indicator of bonding. If it could be found that children as young as 6 months of age demonstrate particular blinking rates or patterns then it could indicate which children are good candidates for early intervention services. This could improve overall long-term outcomes and gives the term “early intervention” a much more powerful meaning.

My son did not receive services until he was 3 years old because I couldn’t get a diagnosis before that, even though I knew as his mother that something was not right. There simply weren’t relative tests for any earlier periods of development 14 years ago when my son was born.

I did, however, instinctively model emotional interactions for my son in a heightened way. Because I knew he acted deaf I often overplayed when I was hurt so as to elicit a nurturing response from him. When that didn’t work at first I intensified my reactions to when he was hurt. Eventually it worked and today my son is very empathetic when others are hurt or upset. He needs to “fix” them. While it may not be the same kind of empathy as typically developing people exhibit or even feel, his nurturing instinct has been developed and is intact. The earlier parents know to utilize tools such as this the better the future is for their children.

6 Responses

on January 10, 2012 at 3:24 pm | Reply akismet-9c3aa8173619055d3bbd7204cb53428bc

I would love to hear more about what you did with your son to try to keep him engaging social and how hard it was.

Thanks

Curtis Maybin

spreading global autism awareness
on January 10, 2012 at 4:25 pm | Reply Jerri Sparks Kaiser

Hi Curtis,

I did a number of things to help my son Jared relate to the world around him instead of letting him fade into his own thought processes. I always got down to his eye level and would say “Jared, eyes on Mommy” whenever he tried to ignore me or would make attempts at conversation without looking at me. I lined his room with non-breakable mirrors so that he would see himself. I put posters on his walls of animals in pairs instead of just alone to try to hit home the message of social interaction. I scheduled weekly playdates when he was from age 1 year to 3 years. I hired a Peer Model to help Jared learn what typically developing children act like (this was basically a teenaged boy from the neighborhood who came over and played basketball and other games with my son when he was 7 & 8 years old). I wrote social stories to emphasize how others felt when things happened to them or when he did things. There’s just so many things I did and continue to do. Floor time was helpful but I found the natural setting of playdates worked a lot better for my son.
- on January 12, 2012 at 1:50 pm | Reply akismet-9c3aa8173619055d3bbd7204cb53428bc
  
  Thanks so much for sharing. I was able to get some new idea’s and some confimation on things already in progress that are working.
  
  God Bless and thanks for being open and honest
  
  Curtis
on January 10, 2012 at 5:29 pm | Reply Ruth

I also noticed, particular with my son, that he would look at my mouth and not my eyes; this is a pretty well-known phenomenon among this with an ASD diagnosis. There are several different explanations why kids with ASD do not have a typical bias towards eye gaze (e.g., lack of central coherence, “intense-world theory,” etc. However, the blinking rate issue needs further investigation. Why else do people blink more or less? Isn’t it an indicator of stress? Decrease blinking rate might also indicate the ability to focus on a stimulus–something you might not be able to do if you found it too stimulating. Some people may blink more when looking at emotional content because they find it overwhelming–not because they don’t find it interesting. So I think this might be useful diagnostically (the way, say, failure to orient to one’s name is) but I would be careful before using it theoretically to understand how ASD should be conceptualized.
- on January 10, 2012 at 6:29 pm | Reply Jerri Sparks Kaiser
  
  Those are all great questions, Ruth, and I do agree they need further investigation. The study had an “n” (participant number) of around 110 with 55 being typically developing and 55 being on the ASD spectrum so I surmise that there was a general trend in the findings. As for interpreting the results, there are always differences among subjects and always alternative explanations for what scientists find and that is why we need repeat studies.
on January 10, 2012 at 10:04 pm | Reply Sally

Very interesting, Jerri. The subject of autism and what it means needs a lot of further study. Anything that helps us develop smarter treatment strategies or helps advance toward a cure is a good thing.