Girls at risk of autism are more socially aware

Infant girls at risk of autism are more socially aware than at-risk infant boys, , a Yale School of Medicine study has found.
Girls pay more attention to people and their faces, an increased awareness linked later on to milder social impairments and greater access to critical social experiences in early development.
In the study, the first of its kind, 101 infants who have older siblings with autism and 61 infants with no risk of autism watched a video of a woman smiling and cooing while pointing to toys and making a sandwich. A team led by Katarzyna Chawarska, Ph.D., associate professor in the Yale Child Study Center and in the Department of Pediatrics, then tracked what the children looked at and for how long.
Chawarska’s lab hopes to discover why girls have this social advantage.
Source: Yale Medicine: http://yalemedicine.yale.edu