Our main purpose is to study typical and atypical developmental trajectories. Currently, we are conducting a research project called “Developmental trajectories in infants at risk for autism: neurocognitive specialization processes and early interaction” in which we look into relevant human skills such as face and human sound processing and socio-emotional interaction with adults, among other things.

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      Measurements are obtained from different tasks. For example, infants are shown with images and sounds on a screen while we register where the baby is looking and adult-baby interaction in a play situation is recorded. We also gather complementary information about the baby. In order to get as much information as possible of the developmental changes in these skills, we do a follow up on the baby with four evaluation time-points (4, 8, 12, 18 and 24 months).

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      With this research project we hope to achieve a better understanding of the development of these skills in order to indentify relevant factors to explaining individual differences observed during development. A better understanding of these factors could mean we are a step closer to accounting for differences in development between infants at genetic risk for autism (infants who have a sibling with autism) and those who are not at genetic risk.