Broader Autism Phenotype and Nonverbal sensitivity: A research paper review

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Contributors: Minara khatun, Misrat Zahan, Ishrat jahan, Gius uddin

TITLE: Broader autism phenotype and nonverbal sensitivity: Evidence for an association in the general population.

Abstract:  This study examined the relationship between characteristics of broader autism phenotype(BAP) and nonverbal sensitivity, the ability to interpret nonverbal aspects of communication in a non-clinical sample of college students.

One hundred and two participants complete a self-measures scale  of BAP, the autism-spectrum quotient  (AQ) and two tests of nonverbal sensitivity:

  • Test of nonverbal cue knowledge  (TONCK)
  • Diagnostic analysis of nonverbal accuracy-2(DANVA-2) 

AQ score was correlated with TONCK performance and the number of an error on the adult faces sub-test of the DANVA-2 but not adult paralanguage and posture.

These findings suggest that characteristics of ASD in the general population are associated with differences in both explicit and implicit knowledge of nonverbal cues.

 

KEYWORD: 

  • Broader autism phenotype: BAP is a set of personality and language characteristics that reflect the phenotype expression of the genetic liability to autism.
  • Nonverbal sensitivity:  Nonverbal sensitivity refers to the ability of individuals to read and decode nonverbal cues in other and importance the ability to correctly interpret the meaning of those cues.

 

 INTRODUCTION:

  • Autism spectrum disorder: ASD is a neurological and developmental disorder that begins early in childhood and last throughout a person life. It affects how a person acts and interacts with others, communication, and learn. It includes what used to be known as Asperger syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder.

  • BAP:  has been used to describe personality characteristics and subclinical symptoms often found first and second degree relative of an individual with ASD which represents a genetic liability of disorder.

  • Autistic behavioural test in a normal population:  more recently it has been found that BAP is not restricted to the family or an individual with autism and that autistic behavioural traits are normally distributed in the general population. (According to the AQ self-measures scale result)

  • AQ test: if autistic behavioural test distributed in the general population who did high score in BAP, such as AQ should also express deficit in the same core area individual with autism. Among the student who did a high score in AQ  used to be lonely or less affected by friend or family member.
  • Cognitive characteristics: two recent studies have examined the relationship between measures of the BAP and cognitive characteristics associate with autism. If a person has a lack of theory of mind it reflects the characteristics of ASD.

  • Nonverbal sensitivity is the ability to interpret and use the nonverbal aspect of communication such as eye gaze, facial expressions, gesture etc. This ability is important for maintaining social interaction and communication.


  • AQ, TONCK and DANVA-2:

AQ: autism spectrum quotient that helps measures nonverbal sensitivity performance.

TONCK: a test of nonverbal cue knowledge that observes nonverbal cues in interpersonal communication.

DANVA-2: it’s a performance-based test which helps the ability to understand facial expressions, paralanguage and posture.

 

METHOD:

Participants:

  • One hundred and six participants.
  • Undergraduate at the large Midwestern university. They were recruited through a departmental subject pool and participated for course credit.
  • Age range 18-20.
  • Female 59% and male 42%.

Measures: 

Autism spectrum quotient:  

  • The AQ is a 50-item self-reported scale that Measure characteristics of autism in the general population.
  • Each item rated on 4 scales:

                                     1.definitely agree

                                     2.slightly agree

                                     3.slightly disagree

                                     4.definitely disagree

  • Example: I prefer to do things on my own, rather than with others

                                   1.definitely agree

                                   2.slightly agree

                                   3.slightly disagree

                                   4.definitely disagree 

  • Item is scored dichotomously as “0” and “1” with 1 representing answer in the direction of autism.
  • AQ has found to have high internal consistency  (.82) and test-retest reliability (.70) in college people.
  • The subtest proposed by Austin (2005).

 

Test of nonverbal cue knowledge(TONCK):

  • The TONCK is an 81-item true/false test.
  • For example:
  1. Hand gesture is not used to regulate the flow of interaction  (false)
  2. You maintain greater interaction distance  with unknown  adults than with familiar  adult(true)
  • The assessment has been found to have high internal consistency  (.82) and test-retest reliability  (.88) in the college population.
  • It has been shown to be correlated with performance-based measured of nonverbal sensitivity, including adult face and adult paralanguage subtest of the (DANVA-2)

 

Diagnostic analysis of nonverbal accuracy(DANVA-2): The three subtest  of DANVA-2 that use adult stimuli:

                 1.Adult face

                 2.Adult paralanguage

                 3.posture

Adult face: (AF) the participant view 24 picture of the male or female actor posing a facial expression of emotion for 2 seconds and rated the emotional expression.

Adult paralanguage: (AP) the participants listen to 24 trials of a male and female voice actor reading a standard sentence” I am going out of the room and come back later”.

Posture: the participants viewed 24 pictures of male and female adults standing and sitting that rated the emotion express of the posture.

  • Higher score indicates a greater number of error.
  • DANVA-2 (AF) subtest has reported internal consistency(.77) test-retest  (.84)

DANVA-2 (AP) consistency  (.78) test-retest reliability  (.83)

DANVA-2 POSTURE consistency  (.78) test-retest reliability(.85).

Result:

The data were for outliners of a participants rate any of the tests of nonverbal sensitivity was greater than a standard deviation above the mean, his or her data were excluded from further analysis. This procedure conducted to control for random responding by participants

 

Correlation between measures of nonverbal sensitivity: there is a significant negative correlation between  TONCK performance and error rate on the adult face (rate=-34, performance <.001) and adult paralanguage (rate=-.21, performance=<.05) but TONCK are not related with DANVA-2 POSTURE. 

Participants of DANVA-2 attend those subtests have a correlation with each other. If one test has high error rate others test also have this but DANVA-2 AP haven’t any relation with POSTURE. 

 

Correlation between BAP and nonverbal sensitivity:  the goal of this study was to examine the relationship between the characteristics associated with BAP and sensitivity of nonverbal cues.

Overall AQ has negatively associated with TONKC because who have high rated autistic characteristics they can’t understand other nonverbal cues.

The subscale of AQ has relation with TONCK about social skills and communication because both have the same test.

AQ has a positive relation with DANVA-2 Adult face. It said that those have characteristics of autism actually have problems understand others facial expression.

 

Discussion: 

  • The result of this study supports the idea that characteristics of BAP in the general population are associated with the difference in interpreting the nonverbal aspect of social communication.
  • General knowledge of nonverbal cues was associated with a lower number of autistic characteristic.
  • Those who have lower on AQ performing better on the TONCK.
  • Identification of facial expression, paralanguage and posture also related with characteristics of autism.
  • Examine the AQ separately it was found that social skills were predictive of performance both TONCK and DANVA-2 because we found nonverbal cues in regular social interaction.
  • It has been taken that individual of autism have a problem recognising negative facial expression because amygdala plays a role expression of the broader autism phenotype.
  • Previous finding research and surveys suggest that there has a modest correlation between TONCK and DANVA-2 because two related to each other.

 

Summary:

This study adds to the literature by further validating the BAP in the general population by showing on Association between subclinical symptoms of ASD and deficits in nonverbal sensitivity, it suggests that the AQ is an appropriate measure of identifying that genetic liability for autism in the general population and may be useful in behavioural and molecular studies aim at identifying the genetic basis of autistic symptoms, future research which can be examined other aspect of nonverbal social communication behaviour,  as well as potential consequences of subtle non-verbal deficit in relation to autistic characteristics, would be informative.

Probably research question:

How the autistic characteristic in the general population are associated with BAP and nonverbal sensitivity?

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