Atypical postural control can be detected via computer vision analysis in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Evidence suggests that differences in motor function are an early feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). One aspect of motor ability that develops during childhood is postural control, reflected in the ability to maintain a steady head and body position without excessive sway. Observational studies have documented differences in postural control in older children with ASD. The present study used computer vision analysis to assess midline head postural control, as reflected in the rate of spontaneous head movements during states of active attention, in 104 toddlers between 16–31 months of age (Mean = 22 months), 22 of whom were diagnosed with ASD. Time-series data revealed robust group differences in the rate of head movements while the toddlers watched movies depicting social and nonsocial stimuli. Toddlers with ASD exhibited a significantly higher rate of head movement as compared to non-ASD toddlers, suggesting difficulties in maintaining midline position of the head while engaging attentional systems. The use of digital phenotyping approaches, such as computer vision analysis, to quantify variation in early motor behaviors will allow for more precise, objective, and quantitative characterization of early motor signatures and potentially provide new automated methods for early autism risk identification.

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

“…Relying on direct observation rather than parent report, the app uses computer vision to assess social attention, affect, social referencing, and motor behaviors. To date, this approach has been shown to reliably distinguish between toddlers at high risk for ASD from toddlers with TD based on patterns of attention, facial expression, motor behavior, and response to name [Campbell et al, 2019;Dawson et al, 2018;Egger et al, 2018]. While this approach does not replace the need for formal evaluation, it does allow for the potential of unbiased identification of children at elevated risk for ASD.…”

Spatiotemporal organization of myoclonic twitching in sleeping human infants

“…The present findings may also open new paths to understanding the close links between cognitive and motor development (Diamond, ; Mittal, Neumann, Saczawa, & Walker, ) and autism (Dawson et al, ; Diamond, ; Esposito & Paşca, ; Green et al, ; Jansiewicz et al, ; Mittal & Walker, ; Nebel et al, ; Whyatt & Craig, ). Indeed, movements produced spontaneously by awake infants can provide a diagnostic tool for the functional assessment of the infant nervous system (Einspieler & Prechtl, ; Ferrari et al, ; Hadders‐Algra, ; Teitelbaum, Teitelbaum, Nye, Fryman, & Maurer, ).…”

Computational Analysis of Deep Visual Data for Quantifying Facial Expression Production

“…Concerning the assessment of ASD behavioral cues, computer vision and machine learning techniques have been effectively exploited in the last years to highlight signs that are considered early features of ASD [12]. Computer vision analysis measured participants' attention and orienting in response to name calls in [13] whereas in [14] the head postural stability was evaluated while the children watched a series of dynamic movies involving different types of stimuli. Both works made use of an algorithm that detects and tracks 49 facial landmarks on the child's face and estimates head pose angles relative to the camera by computing the optimal rotation parameters between the detected landmarks and a 3D canonical face model.…”

“…In particular, from the last column, it is possible to derive that works in [19][20][21][22] did not consider any quantitative evaluation but just a qualitative analysis of the outcomes to highlight the differences in affective abilities of ASD vs. TD groups. [16] x x x expert clinician [15] x manual annotation [13] x x human rater [14] x ASD vs. TD [19] x ASD vs. TD [20] x ASD vs. TD [21] x ASD vs. TD [22] x ASD vs. TD [24] x diagnostic labels (ASD/non-ASD) [23] x x expert human raters (smiling/not smiling)) [8] x expert psychologists (only on ASD Group)…”