Developmental mechanisms of joint attention during parent-infant play among infants at high familial likelihood of later autism diagnosis

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development awarded the University of Houston $117,801 on July 1, 2026, under the Child Health and Human Development Extramural Research Projects program (CFDA 93.865) to support research on developmental mechanisms of joint attention during parent-infant play among infants at high familial likelihood of later autism diagnosis.

The research examines how infants' brains learn to pay attention within complex, dynamic, and ecologically valid social settings during parent-infant play, where parents actively support joint attention experiences. The project addresses a gap in current understanding by moving beyond screen-based eye-tracking tasks and subjective observational coding to employ electroencephalography combined with eye-tracking during naturalistic parent-infant interaction, enabling measurement of neural indices associated with attentiveness among infant siblings of individuals diagnosed with autism—a population known to carry elevated risk for later autism diagnosis. The study focuses on how infants deploy cognitive resources to process targets of shared attention with another individual, a dimension not captured by existing simple shared-attention measures.

Place of performance is Houston, Texas. The period of performance runs from July 1, 2026, through May 31, 2028. The award is classified as a project grant.

Abstract

Visual attention is one of the most robust early indicators of autism, a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent difficulties in social communication - including joint attention (JA), which refers to the ability to simultaneously attend to a target of interest with another individual. Recent research has given considerable focus to studying JA experiences among infant siblings of individuals diagnosed with autism (HFL - high familial likelihood for later autism diagnosis), given the documented link between JA experiences and later developmental outcomes (e.g., autism diagnosis) in this clinical population. However, studies of JA among HFL infants are often limited to screen-based eye-tracking tasks (that are devoid of social context) and subjective observational coding during structured play tasks (which are prone to reliability issues or rely on explicit cues to elicit JA). Importantly, the characterization of JA relies on simple shared attention to a target and does not accurately reflect the extent of the cognitive resources deployed by the infant to process the target. Recent electroencephalography (EEG) studies with screen-based eye-tracking tasks have revealed neural indices associated with attentiveness that may serve as critical differentiators between infant engagement and disengagement during JA episodes - however, these studies are limited to infants with low familial likelihood for later autism diagnosis (LFL), despite considerable EEG work linking neural activities within the first year of life to later autism diagnosis. Consequently, there is a lack of understanding about how infants' brains learn to pay attention within complex, dynamic, and ecologically valid social settings - such as during parent-infant play, where parents are known to actively support JA experiences. To address these issues, the proposed goal of the current study are to implement a new technology that combines head-mounted eye-tracking with EEG recordings to simultaneously record HFL infant attention and neural activity within a social parent-infant play session to explore the following questions: (1) how parental social scaffolding supports JA, (2) how neural indices are related to JA, and (3) how infant neural activity during JA responds to parental social scaffolding. This study aligns with the national institute of health's (NIH) vision and mission of seeking fundamental knowledge about cognitive mechanisms that have the potential to advance early parent-mediated autism interventions offered to families and their children. Ultimately, this project aims to provide essential and innovative research in the area of infant siblings of individuals with autism, while also training a promising new investigator in ethical, methodological, neuroinclusive, and interdisciplinary research practices.