Attention ‘Defocusing’ in 8-month-old Children Predicts Their Future Social Skills

Slowly shifting attention away from an event may be at the root of reduced future interaction and communication.

Published in the special issue of ‘Cerebral Cortex’, dedicated to the biological bases of autism, is the study by a team of researchers from the universities of Padua, Milan, Lecco, Bergamo and Trento.

Scientific research has long aimed to understand the neural circuits at the basis of our social skills, the so-called ‘social brain’, the alteration of which could be at the basis of autism, a developmental disorder characterised by restricted and stereotyped behaviour and social-communication difficulties.

An early alteration of attention could be one of the main causes of a dysfunction in communication and social skills. Attention is the neural mechanism that guides our actions and perception.

In particular, the ability to shift our attention, also known as ‘disengaging’, allows the infant to shift his or her interest away from the event that has captured his or her attention, thus promoting a more efficient exploration of the surrounding world in which he or she can discover the other, i.e. the caregiver or peer with whom he or she can interact.