Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Children learn to communicate via real-time behavioural feedback loops with their social partners (e.g. infant vocalizes, caregiver responds and infant learns from the response). Across development, feedback loops become increasingly complex as children master new skills, engage in new activities, interact with a growing network of social partners, and thus elicit a tremendous variety of social responses. For autistic individuals, these feedback loops unfold in distinct ways. Autistic people's social behaviours (like gaze, gestures and language) differ from the behaviours of non-autistic people; as a result, they elicit different input from social partners, which then has cascading impacts on future social behaviour. Here, we review literature on the mechanisms that underpin social communication development in autism from infancy through adulthood. We discuss how changes in abilities (e.g. motor, cognitive, emotion, communication), social demands and environmental contexts (e.g. interactions with peers) influence the social contingency experiences of autistic individuals. We propose that differences in real-time behavioural feedback loops contribute, in part, to broader developmental trends in autism (e.g. the pace of language learning). Research from neurodiverse samples offers insights into how feedback loops facilitate social communicative development broadly and has real-world implications for clinical and educational initiatives. This article is part of the theme issue 'Mechanisms of learning from social interaction'.
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funders: National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, NIH Office of the Director, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Awards: Social Visual Attention and Language Development in Autism: Leveraging Infant-Directed Speech and Song to Identify Multimodal Mechanisms of Communication, Social Rhythmic Entrainment and Language Development in Autism Spectrum Disorders, Causal connections among infant motor actions and word learning, Examining transdiagnostic mechanisms of language development in infants at elevated likelihood for autism and ADHD, Musical Rhythm Sensitivity to Scaffold Social Engagement in Autism Spectrum Disorder, Rhythm, social information, and conversational entrainment in autism
OpenAlex ID: W7127916488