The own name is a salient stimulus, used by others to initiate social interaction. Typically developing infants orient towards the sound of their own name and exhibit enhanced event-related potentials (ERP) at 5 months. The lack of orientation to the own name is considered to be one of the earliest signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, we investigated ERPs to hearing the own name in infants at high and low risk for ASD, at 10 and 14 months. We hypothesized that low-risk infants would exhibit enhanced frontal ERP responses to their own name compared to an unfamiliar name, while high-risk infants were expected to show attenuation or absence of this difference in their ERP responses. In contrast to expectations, we did not find enhanced ERPs to own name in the low-risk group. However, the high-risk group exhibited attenuated frontal positive-going activity to their own name compared to an unfamiliar name and compared to the low-risk group, at the age of 14 months. These results suggest that infants at high risk for ASD start to process their own name differently shortly after one year of age, a period when frontal brain development is happening at a fast rate.

自己的名字是一个显着的刺激，被其他人用来发起社交互动。通常，发育中的婴儿倾向于自己的名字，并在5个月时表现出增强的事件相关电位（ERP）。缺乏对自己名字的定向性被认为是自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的最早迹象之一。在这项研究中，我们调查了ERPs，以在10个月和14个月时听到患有ASD的高危和低危婴儿的名字。我们假设，与不熟悉的名字相比，低风险的婴儿对自己的名字表现出增强的额叶ERP反应，而高危的婴儿则期望其ERP反应表现出减弱或不存在这种差异。与预期相反，我们没有在低风险组中找到增强的ERP以其名声。然而，与不熟悉的名字和与低风险组相比，高风险组在14个月大时对自己的名字表现出减弱的正面积极性。这些结果表明，患有ASD的高风险婴儿在一岁后不久即开始大脑快速发育的时期开始使用不同的名字处理自己的名字。