It is defined when the child becomes ready for social communication
According to American scientists, children can be ready to enter the society from the age of six.
The ability to respond to the mood and reaction of others is a very important feature that is simply necessary for the child's normal social adaptation. Over the past few years, scientists have been actively engaged in the analysis of human brain structures responsible for socialization. A new experiment, the results of which were published in the periodical Child Development, allowed to study the adaptation processes in the child's brain. The results of the study can equally be useful to both parents and professionals who work with children with autism.
Throughout the study, researchers from the American Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Yale University scanned the brain in thirteen children, in the age group of six to eleven. Scanning was carried out at a time when children were read all kinds of children's works.
Experts noticed that at a time when the story was about sensuality, dreams, skills, moods or about the characters' characters, the children had increased mental activity in certain areas of the brain. In case the narrative changed in the direction of descriptions of nature or surrounding objects, the activity of the brain structures noticeably decreased.
It should also be pointed out that the intensity of the brain function in the departments responsible for socialization had much in common with the active processes occurring in the brain in adults. But there was one very important difference: the work of one of the brain areas over the years has changed significantly. For example, in a six-year-old child, such a site played a primary role in the reaction of conclusions about the surrounding people. However, by the age of eleven, the same site was performing a more specific function: it was activated when the child began to reflect on what other people think.
"The difference we found is a characteristic example of development and age-related improvement in the brain. It will provide answers to the many questions that are put before us. And, above all, this is a question that concerns an atypical social adaptation - we mean autism, "Dr. Rebecca Saxe (one of the study's leaders) commented on the results of the experiment. A child with autism has a lot of problems - sometimes it is difficult for him to assess and interpret the feelings and thoughts of people around him. Scientists hope that eventually they will be able to understand how the human brain manages to learn to analyze other people's thoughts, to perceive them. In the future, specialists will have to find out what processes occur in the human brain in the course of autism. This will allow us to start developing new successful methods for treating this common disorder.