scholarly journals Risk Factors for Unhealthy Weight Gain and Obesity among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (13) ◽  
pp. 3285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khushmol K. Dhaliwal ◽  
Camila E. Orsso ◽  
Caroline Richard ◽  
Andrea M. Haqq ◽  
Lonnie Zwaigenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Weight Gain ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Lifestyle Factors ◽  
Repetitive Behaviors ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Children With Asd ◽  
Unhealthy Weight

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder characterized by social and communication deficits and repetitive behaviors. Children with ASD are also at a higher risk for developing overweight or obesity than children with typical development (TD). Childhood obesity has been associated with adverse health outcomes, including insulin resistance, diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers. Importantly some key factors that play a mediating role in these higher rates of obesity include lifestyle factors and biological influences, as well as secondary comorbidities and medications. This review summarizes current knowledge about behavioral and lifestyle factors that could contribute to unhealthy weight gain in children with ASD, as well as the current state of knowledge of emerging risk factors such as the possible influence of sleep problems, the gut microbiome, endocrine influences and maternal metabolic disorders. We also discuss some of the clinical implications of these risk factors and areas for future research.

scholarly journals Risk Factors of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Palembang, Indonesia

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Ziske Maritska ◽  
Leonardo Satria ◽  
Nita Parisa
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Nervous System Development ◽  
Repetitive Behaviors ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Paternal Age ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Polygenic Inheritance ◽  
Children With Asd

Abstract Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a group of nervous system development disorders with polygenic inheritance patterns, characterized by a type of dysfunctional in social communication and limited also repetitive behaviors.  Risk factors for ASD can be divided into two categories in general: genetic, and environmental factors. To date, a study about risk factors of ASD in Indonesia, let alone Palembang, is limited.  Therefore, this study wished to investigate the risk factors of children with ASD in Dr. Mohammad Hoesin Hospital, Palembang. Method: This study is an observational descriptive study.  Samples were children with ASD who went to Dr. Mohammad Hoesin Hospital, Palembang.  The primary data obtained from a semi-structured interview with parents/guardians of children with ASD, while secondary data obtained from their medical records. Result: The most common risk factors identified in this study are the paternal age and maternal age ≥ 30 years at the time of conception (59,8% and 40.2%), and the history of cesarean delivery (27,8%). Conclusion: This study concludes that the occurrence of ASD in Palembang is multifactorial, involving both genetic and environmental risk factors.

Exploring Growth in Expressive Communication of Infants and Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder

2021 ◽  
pp. 105381512199557
Author(s):  
Jay Buzhardt ◽  
Anna Wallisch ◽  
Dwight Irvin ◽  
Brian Boyd ◽  
Brenda Salley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Progress Monitoring ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Growth Patterns ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Infants And Toddlers ◽  
Early Communication ◽  
Children With Asd ◽  
Language Growth

One of the earliest indicators of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is delay in language and social communication. Despite consensus on the benefits of earlier diagnosis and intervention, our understanding of the language growth of children with ASD during the first years of life remains limited. Therefore, this study compared communication growth patterns of infants and toddlers with ASD to growth benchmarks of a standardized language assessment. We conducted a retrospective analysis of growth on the Early Communication Indicator (ECI) of 23 infants and toddlers who received an ASD diagnosis in the future. At 42 months of age, children with ASD had significantly lower rates of gestures, single words, and multiple words, but significantly higher rates of nonword vocalizations. Children with ASD had significantly slower growth of single and multiple words, but their rate of vocalization growth was significantly greater than benchmark. Although more research is needed with larger samples, because the ECI was designed for practitioners to monitor children’s response to intervention over time, these findings show promise for the ECI’s use as a progress monitoring measure for young children with ASD. Limitations and the need for future research are discussed.

scholarly journals Perceptions of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Etiology among Parents of Children with ASD

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (13) ◽  
pp. 6774
Author(s):  
Wei-Ju Chen ◽  
Zihan Zhang ◽  
Haocen Wang ◽  
Tung-Sung Tseng ◽  
Ping Ma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Neurodevelopmental Disorder ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Parental Perceptions ◽  
Repetitive Behaviors ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Children With Asd ◽  
Religious Factors

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by social communication deficits and restricted or repetitive behaviors. Parental perceptions of the etiology of their child’s ASD can affect provider–client relationships, bonding between parents and their children, and the prognosis, treatment, and management of children with ASD. Thus, this study sought to examine the perceptions of ASD etiology of parents of children with ASD. Methods: Forty-two parents of children diagnosed with ASD were recruited across Texas. Semi-structured interviews were conducted individually. All interviews were recorded and later transcribed verbatim for content analysis utilizing NVivo 12.0 (QSR International, Doncaster, Australia). Results: The content analysis identified the following themes regarding parental perceptions of ASD etiology: Genetic factors (40.5%), environmental factors (31.0%), problems that occurred during pregnancy or delivery (23.8%), vaccinations (16.7%), other health problems (7.1%), parental age at the time of pregnancy (4.8%), and spiritual or religious factors (2.4%). Conclusions: The parental perceptions of ASD etiology were diverse, but several views, such as vaccinations and spiritual or religious factors, were not based on scientific evidence. Health professionals and researchers can use these findings to develop and provide targeted education to parents who have children with ASD. Our findings also support policymakers in developing campaigns designed to increase parental ASD awareness and knowledge.

scholarly journals Acquisition of Verb Meaning From Syntactic Distribution in Preschoolers With Autism Spectrum Disorder

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (3S) ◽  
pp. 668-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabrina Horvath ◽  
Elizabeth McDermott ◽  
Kathleen Reilly ◽  
Sudha Arunachalam
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Verb Learning ◽  
Children With Asd ◽  
Syntactic Frames

Purpose Our goal was to investigate whether preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can begin to learn new word meanings by attending to the linguistic contexts in which they occur, even in the absence of visual or social context. We focused on verbs because of their importance for subsequent language development. Method Thirty-two children with ASD, ages 2;1–4;5 (years;months), participated in a verb-learning task. In a between-subjects design, they were randomly assigned to hear novel verbs in either transitive or intransitive syntactic frames while watching an unrelated silent animation or playing quietly with a toy. In an eye-tracking test, they viewed two video scenes, one depicting a causative event (e.g., boy spinning girl) and the other depicting synchronous events (e.g., boy and girl waving). They were prompted to find the referents of the novel verbs, and their eye gaze was measured. Results Like typically developing children in prior work, children with ASD who had heard the verbs in transitive syntactic frames preferred to look to the causative scene as compared to children who had heard intransitive frames. Conclusions This finding replicates and extends prior work on verb learning in children with ASD by demonstrating that they can attend to a novel verb's syntactic distribution absent relevant visual or social context, and they can use this information to assign the novel verb an appropriate meaning. We discuss points for future research, including examining individual differences that may impact success and contrasting social and nonsocial word-learning tasks directly.

Robots and Autism Spectrum Disorder

2016 ◽  
pp. 905-924
Author(s):  
Amie Senland
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Children With Asd ◽  
Technological Intervention ◽  
Educational Applications ◽  
Potential Use

Technology featuring robots is a promising innovative technological intervention for treating and educating children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This chapter reviews, critiques, and presents future directions for research on clinical and educational applications of robots for these children. Specifically, this chapter reviews current research on: (1) robots that act as social mediators for children with ASD and (2) robots that assist them in developing social skills such as joint attention and imitation. A critical review of the research suggests that robots may have the capacity to assist some of these children, but additional rigorous studies are necessary to demonstrate their efficacy and effectiveness. Future research must (1) examine whether robots have differential effects for specific subgroups of children with ASD and (2) contribute to a deeper understanding of robots' potential use in educational settings.

scholarly journals Machine Learning and Virtual Reality on Body Movements’ Behaviors to Classify Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 1260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariano Alcañiz Raya ◽  
Javier Marín-Morales ◽  
Maria Eleonora Minissi ◽  
Gonzalo Teruel Garcia ◽  
Luis Abad ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Repetitive Behaviors ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Body Movements ◽  
Children With Asd

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is mostly diagnosed according to behavioral symptoms in sensory, social, and motor domains. Improper motor functioning, during diagnosis, involves the qualitative evaluation of stereotyped and repetitive behaviors, while quantitative methods that classify body movements’ frequencies of children with ASD are less addressed. Recent advances in neuroscience, technology, and data analysis techniques are improving the quantitative and ecological validity methods to measure specific functioning in ASD children. On one side, cutting-edge technologies, such as cameras, sensors, and virtual reality can accurately detect and classify behavioral biomarkers, as body movements in real-life simulations. On the other, machine-learning techniques are showing the potential for identifying and classifying patients’ subgroups. Starting from these premises, three real-simulated imitation tasks have been implemented in a virtual reality system whose aim is to investigate if machine-learning methods on movement features and frequency could be useful in discriminating ASD children from children with typical neurodevelopment. In this experiment, 24 children with ASD and 25 children with typical neurodevelopment participated in a multimodal virtual reality experience, and changes in their body movements were tracked by a depth sensor camera during the presentation of visual, auditive, and olfactive stimuli. The main results showed that ASD children presented larger body movements than TD children, and that head, trunk, and feet represent the maximum classification with an accuracy of 82.98%. Regarding stimuli, visual condition showed the highest accuracy (89.36%), followed by the visual-auditive stimuli (74.47%), and visual-auditive-olfactory stimuli (70.21%). Finally, the head showed the most consistent performance along with the stimuli, from 80.85% in visual to 89.36% in visual-auditive-olfactory condition. The findings showed the feasibility of applying machine learning and virtual reality to identify body movements’ biomarkers that could contribute to improving ASD diagnosis.

Stability of Variables Derived From Measures of Multisensory Function in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 287-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kacie Dunham ◽  
Jacob I. Feldman ◽  
Yupeng Liu ◽  
Margaret Cassidy ◽  
Julie G. Conrad ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Multisensory Processing ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Mcgurk Effect ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Children With Asd ◽  
Listening In Noise ◽  
The Stability

Abstract Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display differences in multisensory function as quantified by several different measures. This study estimated the stability of variables derived from commonly used measures of multisensory function in school-aged children with ASD. Participants completed: a simultaneity judgment task for audiovisual speech, tasks designed to elicit the McGurk effect, listening-in-noise tasks, electroencephalographic recordings, and eye-tracking tasks. Results indicate the stability of indices derived from tasks tapping multisensory processing is variable. These findings have important implications for measurement in future research. Averaging scores across repeated observations will often be required to obtain acceptably stable estimates and, thus, to increase the likelihood of detecting effects of interest, as it relates to multisensory processing in children with ASD.

scholarly journals Sensory and repetitive behaviors among children with autism spectrum disorder at home

Autism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne V Kirby ◽  
Brian A Boyd ◽  
Kathryn L Williams ◽  
Richard A Faldowski ◽  
Grace T Baranek
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Free Play ◽  
Repetitive Behaviors ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Behavior Types

Atypical sensory and repetitive behaviors are defining features of autism spectrum disorder and are thought to be influenced by environmental factors; however, there is a lack of naturalistic research exploring contexts surrounding these behaviors. This study involved video recording observations of 32 children with autism spectrum disorder (2–12 years of age) engaging in sensory and repetitive behaviors during home activities. Behavioral coding was used to determine what activity contexts, sensory modalities, and stimulus characteristics were associated with specific behavior types: hyperresponsive, hyporesponsive, sensory seeking, and repetitive/stereotypic. Results indicated that hyperresponsive behaviors were most associated with activities of daily living and family-initiated stimuli, whereas sensory seeking behaviors were associated with free play activities and child-initiated stimuli. Behaviors associated with multiple sensory modalities simultaneously were common, emphasizing the multi-sensory nature of children’s behaviors in natural contexts. Implications for future research more explicitly considering context are discussed.

scholarly journals An Epigenetically Distinct Subset of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Resulting From Differences in Blood Cell Composition

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Jangjoo ◽  
Sarah J. Goodman ◽  
Sanaa Choufani ◽  
Brett Trost ◽  
Stephen W. Scherer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Blood Cell ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Differential Methylation ◽  
Repetitive Behaviors ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Risk Genes ◽  
Immune Systems ◽  
Cell Composition ◽  
Children With Asd

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder that often involves impaired cognition, communication difficulties and restrictive, repetitive behaviors. ASD is extremely heterogeneous both clinically and etiologically, which represents one of the greatest challenges in studying the molecular underpinnings of ASD. While hundreds of ASD-associated genes have been identified that confer varying degrees of risk, no single gene variant accounts for >1% of ASD cases. Notably, a large number of ASD-risk genes function as epigenetic regulators, indicating potential epigenetic dysregulation in ASD. As such, we compared genome-wide DNA methylation (DNAm) in the blood of children with ASD (n = 265) to samples from age- and sex-matched, neurotypical controls (n = 122) using the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 arrays.Results: While DNAm patterns did not distinctly separate ASD cases from controls, our analysis identified an epigenetically unique subset of ASD cases (n = 32); these individuals exhibited significant differential methylation from both controls than the remaining ASD cases. The CpG sites at which this subset was differentially methylated mapped to known ASD risk genes that encode proteins of the nervous and immune systems. Moreover, the observed DNAm differences were attributable to altered blood cell composition, i.e., lower granulocyte proportion and granulocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio in the ASD subset, as compared to the remaining ASD cases and controls. This ASD subset did not differ from the rest of the ASD cases in the frequency or type of high-risk genomic variants.Conclusion: Within our ASD cohort, we identified a subset of individuals that exhibit differential methylation from both controls and the remaining ASD group tightly associated with shifts in immune cell type proportions. This is an important feature that should be assessed in all epigenetic studies of blood cells in ASD. This finding also builds on past reports of changes in the immune systems of children with ASD, supporting the potential role of altered immunological mechanisms in the complex pathophysiology of ASD. The discovery of significant molecular and immunological features in subgroups of individuals with ASD may allow clinicians to better stratify patients, facilitating personalized interventions and improved outcomes.

Parent-Implemented Trial-Based Functional Analysis for Young Children With ASD

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Gerow ◽  
Mandy Rispoli ◽  
Emily Gregori ◽  
Lisa Sanchez
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Functional Analysis ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Challenging Behavior ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Children With Asd ◽  
Function Based Intervention ◽  
Multiple Probe

There is growing support for the use of trial-based functional analysis (TBFA) in applied settings. The purpose of the present study was to assess the accuracy and social validity of parent-implemented TBFAs. The participants were three young children (ages 3–7 years old) with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their mothers. Each mother implemented the TBFA with coaching from a behavior consultant. Following the TBFA, parent-implemented function-based interventions were evaluated using a multiple-probe across parent–child dyads design. Child challenging behavior decreased and communication increased following the implementation of the function-based intervention. TBFAs required approximately 5 to 7 hr of consultant time, and each mother rated the TBFA as socially valid. The results of this study indicate parent-implemented TBFAs may be an accurate and socially valid method to evaluate the function of challenging behavior in homes. The discussion includes implications for practice and directions for future research.

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