Complexity analysis of head movements in autistic toddlers

Pradeep Raj Krishnappa Babu, J. Matias Di Martino, Zhuoqing Chang, Sam Perochon, Rachel Aiello, Kimberly L.H. Carpenter, Scott Compton, Naomi Davis, Lauren Franz, Steven Espinosa, Jacqueline Flowers, Geraldine Dawson, Guillermo Sapiro

Producción científica: Contribución a una revistaArtículorevisión exhaustiva

8 Citas (Scopus)

Resumen

Background: Early differences in sensorimotor functioning have been documented in young autistic children and infants who are later diagnosed with autism. Previous research has demonstrated that autistic toddlers exhibit more frequent head movement when viewing dynamic audiovisual stimuli, compared to neurotypical toddlers. To further explore this behavioral characteristic, in this study, computer vision (CV) analysis was used to measure several aspects of head movement dynamics of autistic and neurotypical toddlers while they watched a set of brief movies with social and nonsocial content presented on a tablet. Methods: Data were collected from 457 toddlers, 17–36 months old, during their well-child visit to four pediatric primary care clinics. Forty-one toddlers were subsequently diagnosed with autism. An application (app) displayed several brief movies on a tablet, and the toddlers watched these movies while sitting on their caregiver's lap. The front-facing camera in the tablet recorded the toddlers' behavioral responses. CV was used to measure the participants' head movement rate, movement acceleration, and complexity using multiscale entropy. Results: Autistic toddlers exhibited significantly higher rate, acceleration, and complexity in their head movements while watching the movies compared to neurotypical toddlers, regardless of the type of movie content (social vs. nonsocial). The combined features of head movement acceleration and complexity reliably distinguished the autistic and neurotypical toddlers. Conclusions: Autistic toddlers exhibit differences in their head movement dynamics when viewing audiovisual stimuli. Higher complexity of their head movements suggests that their movements were less predictable and less stable compared to neurotypical toddlers. CV offers a scalable means of detecting subtle differences in head movement dynamics, which may be helpful in identifying early behaviors associated with autism and providing insight into the nature of sensorimotor differences associated with autism.

Idioma originalInglés
Páginas (desde-hasta)156-166
Número de páginas11
PublicaciónJournal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines
Volumen64
N.º1
DOI
EstadoPublicada - ene. 2023
Publicado de forma externa

Huella

Profundice en los temas de investigación de 'Complexity analysis of head movements in autistic toddlers'. En conjunto forman una huella única.

Citar esto