Importance Onset of mental disorders during childhood or adolescence has been associated with underperformance in school and impairment in social and occupational life in adulthood, which has important implications for the affected individuals and society. Objective To compare the educational achievements at the final examination of compulsory schooling in Denmark between individuals with and those without a mental disorder. Design, Setting, and Participants This population-based cohort study was conducted in Denmark and obtained data from the Danish Civil Registration System and other nationwide registers. The 2 cohorts studied were (1) all children who were born in Denmark between January 1, 1988, and July 1, 1999, and were alive at age 17 years (n = 629 622) and (2) all children who took the final examination at the end of ninth grade in both Danish and mathematics subjects between January 1, 2002, and December 31, 2016 (n = 542 500). Data analysis was conducted from March 1, 2018, to March 1, 2019. Exposures Clinical diagnosis by a psychiatrist of any mental disorder or 1 of 29 specific mental disorders before age 16 years. Main Outcomes and Measures Taking the final examination at the end of ninth grade and mean examination grades standardized aszscores with differences measured in SDs (standardized mean grade difference). Results Of the total study population (n = 629 622; 306 209 female and 323 413 male), 523 312 individuals (83%) took the final examination before 17 years of age and 38 001 (6%) had a mental disorder before that age. Among the 542 500 individuals (274 332 female and 268 168 male), the mean (SD) age was 16.1 (0.33) years for the females and 16.2 (0.34) years for the males. Among the 15 843 female and 22 158 male students with a mental disorder, a lower proportion took the final examination (0.52; 95% CI, 0.52-0.53) compared with individuals without a mental disorder (0.88; 95% CI, 0.88-0.88). Mental disorders affected the grades of male individuals (standardized mean grade difference, –0.30; 95% CI, –0.32 to –0.28) more than the grades of their female peers (standardized mean grade difference, –0.24; 95% CI, –0.25 to –0.22) when compared with same-sex individuals without mental disorders. Most specific mental disorders were associated with statistically significantly lower mean grades, with intellectual disability associated with the lowest grade in female and male students (standardized mean grade difference, –1.07 [95% CI, –1.23 to –0.91] and –1.03 [95% CI, –1.17 to –0.89];P = .76 for sex differences in the mean grades). Female and male students with anorexia nervosa achieved statistically significantly higher grades on the final examination (standardized mean grade difference, 0.38 [95% CI, 0.32-0.44] and 0.31 [95% CI, 0.11-0.52];P = .54 for sex differences in the mean grades) compared with their peers without this disorder. For those with anxiety, attachment, attention-deficit/hyperactivity, and other developmental disorders, female individuals attained relatively lower standardized mean grades compared with their male counterparts. Conclusions and Relevance Results of this study suggest that, in Denmark, almost all mental disorders in childhood or adolescence may be associated with a lower likelihood of taking the final examination at the end of ninth grade; those with specific disorders tended to achieve lower mean grades on the examination; and female, compared with male, individuals with certain mental disorders appeared to have relatively more impairment. These findings appear to emphasize the need to provide educational support to young people with mental disorders.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/articlepdf/2763443/jamapsychiatry_dalsgaard_2020_oi_200007.pdf

Association of Mental Disorder in Childhood and Adolescence With Subsequent Educational Achievement.

The genetic and environmental origins of emotional and cognitive empathy: Review and meta-analyses of twin studies

Few clinically validated biomarkers of ASD exist which can rapidly, accurately, and objectively identify autism during the first years of life and be used to support optimized treatment outcomes and advances in precision medicine. As such, the goal of the present study was to leverage both simple and computationally-advanced approaches to validate an eye-tracking measure of social attention preference, the GeoPref Test, among 1,863 ASD, delayed, or typical toddlers (12-48 months) referred from the community or general population via a primary care universal screening program. Toddlers participated in diagnostic and psychometric evaluations and the GeoPref Test: a 1-min movie containing side-by-side dynamic social and geometric images. Following testing, diagnosis was denoted as ASD, ASD features, LD, GDD, Other, typical sibling of ASD proband, or typical. Relative to other diagnostic groups, ASD toddlers exhibited the highest levels of visual attention towards geometric images and those with especially high fixation levels exhibited poor clinical profiles. Using the 69% fixation threshold, the GeoPref Test had 98% specificity, 17% sensitivity, 81% PPV, and 65% NPV. Sensitivity increased to 33% when saccades were included, with comparable validity across sex, ethnicity, or race. The GeoPref Test was also highly reliable up to 24 months following the initial test. Finally, fixation levels among twins concordant for ASD were significantly correlated, indicating that GeoPref Test performance may be genetically driven. As the GeoPref Test yields few false positives (~ 2%) and is equally valid across demographic categories, the current findings highlight the ability of the GeoPref Test to rapidly and accurately detect autism before the 2nd birthday in a subset of children and serve as a biomarker for a unique ASD subtype in clinical trials. 

/pdf/large-scale-validation-of-an-early-age-eye-tracking-2esjx06f.pdf

Large scale validation of an early-age eye-tracking biomarker of an autism spectrum disorder subtype

Are there quantitative differences between eye-gaze and arrow cues? A meta-analytic answer to the debate and a call for qualitative differences

Social attention is crucial for efficient social interactions and adaptive functioning in humans. However, whether this indispensable ability is unique and qualitatively distinct from nonsocial attention remains equivocal. Using the visual adaptation technique in conjunction with a modified central cueing paradigm, the current study investigated the specificity of social attention. Results revealed that adaptation to the walking direction of biological motion (BM) affected the reflexive attentional effect triggered by subsequent BM cues. Critically, preexposure to another type of social cues (i.e., eye gaze) could produce a similar aftereffect on attentional orienting elicited by BM, reflecting that social attention induced by different types of cues might share common neural substrates. By contrast, such cross-category adaptation aftereffect disappeared when adaptors changed to nonsocial cues (i.e., arrows). In the same vein, adaptation to BM cues could also exert an aftereffect on gaze cueing but not arrow cueing effect. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for the view that "social attention is special" and support the existence of "social attention detector" in the human brain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Cross-category adaptation of reflexive social attention.

BackgroundSocial attention ability is crucial for human adaptive social behaviors and interpersonal communications, and the malfunction of which has been implicated in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a highly genetic neurodevelopmental disorder marked by striking social deficits.MethodsUsing a classical twin design, the current study investigated the genetic contribution to individual variation in social and non-social attention abilities, and further probed their potential genetic linkage. Moreover, individual autistic traits were further measured in an independent group of non-twin participants to examine the hypothetical link between the core social attention ability and ASD.ResultsWe found reliable genetic influences on the social attentional effects induced by two distinct cues (eye gaze and walking direction), with 91% of their covariance accounted for by common genetic effects. However, no evidence of heritability or shared genetic effects was observed for the attentional effect directed by a non-social cue (i.e. arrow direction) and its correlation with the social attention ability. Remarkably, one's autistic traits could well predict his/her heritable core social attention ability extracted from the conventional social attentional effect.ConclusionsThese findings together suggest that human social attention ability is supported by unique genetic mechanisms that can be shared across different social, but not non-social, processing. Moreover, they also encourage the identification of ‘social attention genes’ and highlight the critical role of the core human social attention ability in seeking the endophenotypes of social cognitive disorders including ASD.

Heritability of reflexive social attention triggered by eye gaze and walking direction: common and unique genetic underpinnings

Previous research has shown that social cues, including eye gaze, can readily guide our focus of attention—a phenomenon referred to as social attention. Here, we demonstrated that internally maintained social cues in working memory (WM) can produce an analogous attentional effect (N = 57). Using the delayed-match-to-sample paradigm combined with the dot-probe task, we found that holding irrelevant gaze cues in WM can induce attentional orienting in college-age adults. Importantly, this WM-induced attention effect could not be explained simply by the perceptual-attentional process, because the identical gaze cues that were only passively viewed and not memorized in WM could not trigger attentional orienting beyond the typical time window of social attention. Furthermore, nonsocial cues (i.e., arrows) held in WM failed to elicit the attentional-orienting effect. These findings provide new evidence for the conceptualization of WM as internally directed attention and highlight the uniqueness of social attention compared with nonsocial attention.

Internal Social Attention: Gaze Cues Stored in Working Memory Trigger Involuntary Attentional Orienting

State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

/pdf/data-from-cross-modal-social-attention-triggered-by-2m31fib9pd.pdf

Data from: Cross-modal Social Attention Triggered by Biological Motion Cues

Social directional cues (e.g., gaze direction; walking direction) can trigger reflexive attentional orienting, a phenomenon known as social attention. Here, we examined whether this reflexive social attention could be modulated by the emotional content embedded in social cues. By introducing emotional (happy and sad) biological motion (BM) stimuli to the modified central cuing paradigm, we found that the happy but not the sad emotional gait could significantly boost attentional orienting effect relative to the neutral gait. Critically, this "happiness advantage" effect could be extended to social attention induced by gaze. Furthermore, the observed differential emotional modulations could not be simply explained by low-level physical differences between the emotional stimuli, as inverted social cues (i.e., BM and face) failed to produce such modulation effects. Overall, these findings highlight the role of emotional information in modulating the processing of social signals, and further suggest the existence of a general emotional modulation on social attention triggered by different types of social signals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Happy is stronger than sad: Emotional information modulates social attention.

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