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1. A Six‐Minute Measure of Vocalizations in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

   https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2293  

   Tenenbaum, Elena J. ; Carpenter, Kimberly L. H. ; Sabatos‐DeVito, Maura ; Hashemi, Jordan ; Vermeer, Saritha ; Sapiro, Guillermo ; Dawson, Geraldine ( March 2020 , Autism Research)

   To improve early identification of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), we need objective, reliable, and accessible measures. To that end, a previous study demonstrated that a tablet‐based application (app) that assessed several autism risk behaviors distinguished between toddlers with ASD and non‐ASD toddlers. Using vocal data collected during this study, we investigated whether vocalizations uttered during administration of this app can distinguish among toddlers aged 16–31 months with typical development (TD), language or developmental delay (DLD), and ASD. Participant's visual and vocal responses were recorded using the camera and microphone in a tablet while toddlers watched movies designed to elicit behaviors associated with risk for ASD. Vocalizations were then coded offline. Results showed that (a) children with ASD and DLD were less likely to produce words during app administration than TD participants; (b) the ratio of syllabic vocalizations to all vocalizations was higher among TD than ASD or DLD participants; and (c) the rates of nonsyllabic vocalizations were higher in the ASD group than in either the TD or DLD groups. Those producing more nonsyllabic vocalizations were 24 times more likely to be diagnosed with ASD. These results lend support to previous findings that early vocalizations might be useful in identifying risk for ASD in toddlers and demonstrate the feasibility of using a scalable tablet‐based app for assessing vocalizations in the context of a routine pediatric visit.

   Although parents often report symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in infancy, we are not yet reliably diagnosing ASD until much later in development. A previous study tested a tablet‐based application (app) that recorded behaviors we know are associated with ASD to help identify children at risk for the disorder. Here we measured how children vocalize while they watched the movies presented on the tablet. Children with ASD were less likely to produce words, less likely to produce speechlike sounds, and more likely to produce atypical sounds while watching these movies. These measures, combined with other behaviors measured by the app, might help identify which children should be evaluated for ASD.Autism Res2020, 13: 1373–1382. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

    

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2. Relationship between quantitative digital behavioral features and clinical profiles in young autistic children

   https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2955  

   Coffman, Marika ; Di Martino, J. Matias ; Aiello, Rachel ; Carpenter, Kimberly L. H. ; Chang, Zhuoqing ; Compton, Scott ; Eichner, Brian ; Espinosa, Steve ; Flowers, Jacqueline ; Franz, Lauren ; et al ( June 2023 , Autism Research)

   Early behavioral markers for autism include differences in social attention and orienting in response to one's name when called, and differences in body movements and motor abilities. More efficient, scalable, objective, and reliable measures of these behaviors could improve early screening for autism. This study evaluated whether objective and quantitative measures of autism‐related behaviors elicited from an app (SenseToKnow) administered on a smartphone or tablet and measured via computer vision analysis (CVA) are correlated with standardized caregiver‐report and clinician administered measures of autism‐related behaviors and cognitive, language, and motor abilities. This is an essential step in establishing the concurrent validity of a digital phenotyping approach. In a sample of 485 toddlers, 43 of whom were diagnosed with autism, we found that CVA‐based gaze variables related to social attention were associated with the level of autism‐related behaviors. Two language‐related behaviors measured via the app, attention to people during a conversation and responding to one's name being called, were associated with children's language skills. Finally, performance during a bubble popping game was associated with fine motor skills. These findings provide initial support for the concurrent validity of the SenseToKnow app and its potential utility in identifying clinical profiles associated with autism. Future research is needed to determine whether the app can be used as an autism screening tool, can reliably stratify autism‐related behaviors, and measure changes in autism‐related behaviors over time.

    

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3. Neural responses to linguistic stimuli in children with and without autism spectrum disorder

   https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.13721  

   Finch, Kayla H. ; Tager‐Flusberg, Helen ; Nelson, Charles A. ( October 2017 , European Journal of Neuroscience)

   Atypical neural responses to language have been found in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and in their unaffected siblings. However, given that language difficulties are often seen in these children, it is difficult to interpret whether these neural differences are a result of the diagnosis ofASDor impairments in their language abilities. In this study, we recorded event‐related potentials (ERPs) from four groups of 36‐month‐olds: low‐risk control (LRC), high risk forASDdefined as having an older sibling withASD(HRA) but who do not haveASDor milder autism‐like symptoms (HRA‐Typ),HRAchildren who do not haveASDbut exhibit milder autism‐like symptoms (HRA‐Atyp) andHRAchildren diagnosed withASD(ASD). Children listened to words expected to be acquired early (e.g. ball) and words expected to be acquired late (e.g. calf).ERPs were analysed over time windows sensitive to word processing as well as frontal and temporo‐parietal sites over the left and right hemispheres. When controlling for language abilities, there were group differences within the temporo‐parietal sites. Specifically, theHRA‐Atyp group showed a different timed response to late words compared to theASDandLRCgroups. In addition, we found a relation between neural responses in the left frontal sites andASDseverity. Our results suggest that both language abilities andASDdiagnoses are important to consider when interpreting neural differences in lexical processing.

    

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4. Towards the Synthesis of Parent-Infant Facial Interactions

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FG52635.2021.9667019  

   Wang, Renke ; Amy Ahn, Yeo Jin ; Messinger, Daniel ; Nwogu, Ifeoma ( December 2021 , 2021 16th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2021))

   This work is motivated by the need to automate the analysis of parent-infant interactions to better understand the existence of any potential behavioral patterns useful for the early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It presents an approach for synthesizing the facial expression exchanges that occur during parent-infant interactions. This is accomplished by developing a novel approach that uses landmarks when synthesizing changing facial expressions. The proposed model consists of two components: (i) The first is a landmark converter that receives a set of facial landmarks and the target emotion as input and outputs a set of new landmarks transformed to match the emotion. (ii) The second component involves an image converter that takes in an input image, a target landmark and a target emotion and outputs a face transformed to match the input emotion. The inclusion of landmarks in the generation process proves useful in the generation of baby facial expressions; babies have somewhat different facial musculature and facial dynamics than adults. This paper presents a realistic-looking matrix of changing facial expressions sampled from a 2-D emotion continuum (valence and arousal) and displays successfully transferred facial expressions from real-life mother-infant dyads to novel ones. 

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5. A longitudinal study of pupillary light reflex in 6- to 24-month children

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58254-6  

   Kercher, Clare ; Azinfar, Leila ; Dinalankara, Dinalankara M. R. ; Takahashi, T. Nicole ; Miles, Judith H. ; Yao, Gang ( January 2020 , Scientific Reports)

   Pupillary light reflex (PLR) is an involuntary response where the pupil size changes with luminance. Studies have shown that PLR response was altered in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and other neurological disorders. However, PLR in infants and toddlers is still understudied. We conducted a longitudinal study to investigate PLR in children of 6–24 months using a remote pupillography device. The participants are categorized into two groups. The ‘high risk’ (HR) group includes children with one or more siblings diagnosed with ASDs; whereas the ‘low risk’ (LR) group includes children without an ASD diagnosis in the family history. The participants’ PLR was measured every six months until the age of 24 months. The results indicated a significant age effect in multiple PLR parameters including resting pupil radius, minimal pupil radius, relative constriction, latency, and response time. In addition, the HR group had a significantly larger resting and minimal pupil size than the LR group. The experimental data acquired in this study revealed not only general age-related PLR changes in infants and toddlers, but also different PLRs in children with a higher risk of ASD.

    

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