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Parents who report motor difficulties as their primary concern receive autism intervention services earlier than those first concerned with communication. This study revealed that parent perceptions of their child’s social responsiveness correlated with standardized scores of motor proficiency. Promoting awareness of this relationship could lead parents to seek services sooner.

The purposes of the study were (1) to compare postural sway between participants with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and healthy controls and (2) to develop and validate an automated classification of PD postural control patterns using a machine learning approach. A total of 9 participants in the early stage of PD and 12 healthy controls were recruited. Participants were instructed to stand on a force plate and maintain stillness for 2 minutes with eyes open and eyes closed. The center of pressure data were collected at 50 Hz. Linear displacements, standard deviations, total distances, sway areas, and multiscale entropy of center of pressure were calculated and compared using mixed-model analysis of variance. Five supervised machine learning algorithms (ie, logistic regression, K-nearest neighbors, Naïve Bayes, decision trees, and random forest) were used to classify PD postural control patterns. Participants with PD exhibited greater center of pressure sway and variability compared with controls. The K-nearest neighbor method exhibited the best prediction performance with an accuracy rate of up to 0.86. In conclusion, participants with PD exhibited impaired postural stability and their postural sway features could be identified by machine learning algorithms.

Objectives Previous studies have shown that use of assistive devices may contribute to loss of balance and increased risk of falls. The purpose of this study was to compare postural steadiness of older adults using straight cane, tripod, and quad cane. Methods Sixteen healthy older adults (8 men, 8 women; age, 62–84 years) were recruited. Analyses focused on mean and root-mean-square distances from the mean center of pressure position, 95% confidence circle area, total power, 95% power frequencies, and centroidal frequency of the sway signal. Results Significant improvements in postural steadiness were found when the tripod cane tip was used as compared with straight cane. All measured variables of postural steadiness with the tripod cane tip, however, were significantly below those of the quad cane. Discussion The findings suggest that use of the tripod cane tip can significantly improve postural steadiness over use of the straight cane. Our findings, however, suggest that tripod canes provide less level of postural steadiness than quad canes.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show motor deficits in addition to the social communication and repetitive behaviors characteristic of the disorder. However, these deficits have traditionally been targeted independently during intervention. The primary purpose of this systematic review was to determine whether interventions with motor targets improved language or social communication outcomes in individuals with ASD. Methods: Five databases were searched using the following terms:autis*, asper*, motor*, therap*, interven*, and treat*. After eliminating irrelevant and duplicate articles, 74 articles underwent full text review to determine whether they met the inclusionary/exclusionary criteria. The 15 included articles were then checked for inter-rater reliability and appraised for the quality of their research design, treatment fidelity, and interobserver agreement. Following the quality appraisals, 13 included articles were analyzed for final data extraction. Results: Of the 13 included studies, 12 showed at least one increased language outcome, seven demonstrated at least one increased motor outcome, and one revealed no significant change in either language or motor outcomes. Conclusions: Consistent with previous research, many of the children with ASD presented weaknesses in both motor and language skills. In most studies, the motor-based interventions led to an increase in language skills, indicating language and motor system interdependence. These findings also suggest that co-treatment between physical therapists and occupational therapists alongside speech-language pathologists may be warranted when working with children with ASD.