• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.265-273
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• 2015

Children with autistic spectrum disorder(ASD) have a strength in visual process and systemizing, and they show interest toward things and machines. Therefore, robots have been suggested as a useful tool for the rehabilitation of the children with ASD. A robot can attract children's interest and attention, and it can provide simplified social stimulus. A robot can be applied repetitively, and programmed for the special needs of an individual child. In this study, we review literature related to the use of robots for the rehabilitation of children with ASD. For this purpose, related literature was searched with the keywords of autism and robot. We selected eleven domestic papers, and analyzed their contents to identify robots, stimulus of robots, experiment process and dependent variables.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.108-117
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• 1994

Twenty nine children with autism and thirty children with mental retardation were examined for association between autism and chromosomal disorders including fragile X. The peripheral blood was cultured in Medium 199 with methotrexate and without methorexate for 70 hours. Thirty metaphase cells in each case were karyotyped in all samples. Chromosomal abnormalities were found in 11 cases(37.9%) of autistic disorder and 10 cases (33.3%) of mental retardation, but in none of fragile(X)(q27.3) from all cases. Chromosomal abnormalities were present on group A, C, D and X in autistic disorder and on group A, B, C, D, E and X in mental retardation. No specific chromosomal region was found in both autistic disorder and mental retardation. Types of chromosomal disorders were only fragile and/or gap but no numerical abnormality was present in all cases. Number of cells which revealed fragile sites were 31 cells(3.6%) out of 870 cells in autistic disorder and 29 cells(3.2%) out of 900 cells in mental retardation Number of cells which revealed gaps were 43 cells(4.9%) out of 870 cells in autistic disorder and 35 cells(3.9%) out of 900 cells in mental retardation. Autistic disorder may not be directly correlated with fragile X but with nonspecific chromosomal breakages from these data.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.76-86
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• 1991

Plasma $dopamine-{\beta}-hydroxylase(DBH)$ activity was measured in 37 autistic disorders, 26 atypical pervasive developmental disorders and 23 controls, to elucidate the biological etiology in pervasive developmental disorders. The results are summarized as follows : 1) In the autistic group, the mean plasma DBH activity was significantly elevated compared to the atypical and control groups. The mean plasma DBH activity was also significantly elevated in pervasive developmental disorders(autistic disorder+atypical developmental disorder) compared to control group. 2) In the atypical and control groups, the DBH activity significantly increased with age, but in the autistic group, the DBH activity was not significantly correlated with age. 3) No significant correlation was found between the DBH activity and the severity of psychopathology. These findings support the hypothesis of a possible involvement of brain catecholamine dysfunction in the production of autistic symptoms, and this dysfunction might be due to the abnormal ontogenetic process of DBH activity in autistic disorders.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.411-418
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to estimate the current status and trends of healthcare utilization among people with ASD. Using National Health Insurance open database, from 2010 to 2017. We analyzed the treatment prevalence for people with ASD, the pattern of healthcare utilization, the difference in medical care utilization according to age, and the type and location of main medical institutions. The main results of the study are as follows: First, the medical utilization has been continuously increasing from 2010 to 2017. The total amount of medical utilization is increased by 50% in 2017 compared to 2010, and the treatment prevalence was estimated to be 79.1% in 2017 and medical uses for the next three years is also increasing. Second, the pattern of medical care utilization varied widely according to age, especially after 20 years of age. Third, the types of medical institutions that were mainly used were 45.6% in the medical clinic and 35.9% in Seoul. The results of this study can be used as a minimum reference point of evaluating the effectiveness of government policy on future autistic disorders. However, further studies are required to increase the prevalence of treatment for autistic patients and to find out the difference in medical use according to age.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.153-159
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• 2005

Autistic disorder and other PDD are currently viewed as a largely genetically determined neurodevelopmental disorder, although its underlying biological causes remain to be established. In this review, we examine the available neurodevelopmental literature on autistic disorder and discuss the findings that have emerged. Typical neuropathological observations are rather consistent with respect to the limbic system (increased cell packing density and smaller neuronal size), the cerebellum (decreased number of Purkinje cells) and the cerebral cortex ($>50\%$ of the cases showed features of cortical dysgenesis). However, most of the reported studies had to contend with the problem of small sample sizes, the use of quantification techniques, not free of bias and assumptions, and high percentages of autistic subjects with comorbid mental retardation or epilepsy. Furthermore, data from the limbic system and on age-related changes lack replication by independent groups. It is anticipated that future neuropathological studies held great promise, especially as new techniques such as design-based stereology and gene expression are increasingly implemented and combined, larger samples are analysed, and younger subjects free of comorbidities are investigated.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.153-163
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• 2018

The purpose of this research is to investigate the research trends on the clinical use of robots for children with autistic spectrum disorders. In order to understand research trends in the context of the clinical use of robots for children with ASD, recent studies on the use of robot in the educational and therapeutic intervention were examined. Critical literature review is used as research method. Recent studies of 17 articles are chosen with two filters of 1) publication years since 2009, and 2) two key-words; robot and ASD. Further, literature on research trends is scrutinized and categorized according to the kinds of robots that are used, the types of independent and dependent variables, and research methods. The result of this research indicated that recent years, the clinical use of interactive robots with children with disability has received considerable attention in light of the proven utility of educational and therapeutic intervention. Rapid progress in robotics, especially in the area of ASD, offers tremendous possibilities for innovation in treatment for children with ASD. In conclusion, this study addresses the need of further study on the implementation procedures and protocols of clinical robots that will make the adoption feasible and easy.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.165-173
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• 2016

Objectives : Since the awareness of autism spectrum disorders(ASD) is growing, as a result, it is increasing numbers of infants and toddlers being referred to specialized clinics for a differential diagnosis and the importance of early autism spectrum disorders detection is emphasized. This study is to know the difference between ASD and intellectual disability(ID) from comparison of the demographics, clinical characters and obstetric complications. Methods : The participants are 816 toddlers who visited the developmental delay clinic(DDC) in National Health Insurance Ilsan hospital. The number of toddlers diagnosed as ASD and ID was 324 and 492. 75 toddlers out of 114 who returned to DDC were diagnosed as ID at the first visit but 7 of them had changed diagnosis to ASD at the second visit. After compared ASD with ID from the first visit, we analyzed characters of toddlers who had the changed diagnosis to ASD at the second visit. Results : As a result, the comparison between ASD and ID at the first visit shows that the boys have higher ratio, lower obstetric complication and lower language assessment score in ASD. The toddlers who had the changed diagnosis at the second visit were all boys and they had more cases of family history of developmental delay and had lower score of receptive language developmental quotient. Conclusions : These findings suggest that sex, language characteristics and obstetric complication could be useful in the early detection of ASD.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.165-173
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• 1998

Objectives：This study was conducted to compare the cognitive characteristics and visual-motor coordination ability of children with Asperger’s disorder and with those of children with PDD NOS. Methods：27 children(13 in AS group and 14 in PDD NOS group) were individually assessed using the K-WISC and BGT, and the results of those tests were analyzed. Results：The mean FSIQ of the AS group was significantly higher than that of the PDD NOS group. There was also a large discrepancy between VIQ and PIQ in the PDD NOS, while there was not significant discrepancy in the AS. The AS was distinguished from PDD NOS group by significantly higher scores in Vocabulary and Comprehension subscales and lower score in Block design. Also, when compared with the PDD NOS, the AS showed more difficulties in visual-motor coordination. Conclusion：The AS showed relatively good verbal and learning ability, while the PDD NOS relatively superior ability in visuospatial function and visual-motor coordination. The findings indicated that the K-WISC and BGT might be useful assessment tool to differentiate the AS from PDD NOS.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.429-440
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• 2010

It is known that as many as 1 in 91 children are diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder, and the incidence rate of the autistic spectrum disorder is much higher than that of cancer in Korea. It is necessary to develop a novel technology to sense their emotional status and give proper psychological diagnosis and therapy, since the children with autistic spectrum disorder usually do not express their own emotional status. This article presents the state-of-the-arts on the affective computing technologies that include recognition of emotional status through bio-sensing and virtual affective agent modeling, and then proposes a novel system architecture for diagnosis and therapy of autistic spectrum disorder. The diagnosis and therapy system of autistic spectrum disorder is composed of bio-sensing module, virtual environment module with affective agents, and haptic interface module. The architecture proposed in this paper will enhance the objectivity to diagnose autism spectrum disorders, and enable continuous treatment in daily life.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.47-60
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to examine the musical preference of autistic children. Based on the written responses of the questionnaire from mothers, therapists and teachers of 60 autistic children the music preference of the autistic children were analyzed. The results showed that the autistic children prefer music listening rather than playing or singing. The keyboard and piano are the most preferred instruments by these children. In music genre they prefer children's song and commercial music. Though they all have language disorder, they have a strong tendency toward music with text. It was also found that there is a relationship between music preference and behavior. The hyperactive and oppositional children have a tendency to enjoy more stimulative music compared to other autistic children.