• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.38-45
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an increase in self - determination experience on the behavior of young children with autism spectrum disorder by telepresence robot. As for research method, the study used AB design, two selected children engaged in activities with a telepresence robot in free play time in the morning. The activities were conducted in 19 sessions, twice a week, 15 to 40 minutes each. To investigate the effect of the activity on the child's behavior was observed using the behaviors of free play time and work time in the afternoon. All the process was recorded by a camera and then analyzed by frequency recording. The results of the study are as follows. First, the participation of young children with autism spectrum disorder in free play time increased. Second, choice-making or preference behavior of young children with autistic spectrum disorder were increased. This study suggests that increasing the self-determination experience of young children with autism spectrum disorders using telepresence robots increases their participation and increases their choice-making or preference behavior.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.53-67
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• 2012

Improvisational music therapy is known to promote social engagement in children with autism. This study investigated salient features that characterize the engagement of the child with autism and the therapist in improvisational music therapy. Through video analysis of the children's behavior, this study sets out to investigate what engages children with autism into mutual play with the therapist in improvisational music therapy by measuring the shared musical elements between the child and the therapist during musical synchronicity episodes and the children's choice of instruments. A repeated measures, a crossover design was employed in two different conditions (n = 10). Children were randomly assigned into two groups; group 1 participated music therapy first, followed by play therapy second. Group 2 followed the reverse order. Specific target behaviors were analyzed in the selected sessions 1, 4, 8 and 12. As expected, improvisational music therapy produced markedly more and longer events of musical synchronicity in children with autism than the play sessions with toys (p < .001). Rhythm and dynamic appeared to be the two most salient elements during musical synchronicity events between the child and the therapist. Observational findings confirmed that horns and whistles were the most frequently selected instruments in music therapy, whereas a dollhouse set was in play therapy by children with autism. The clinical implications and the details of these findings are discussed further.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.613-623
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• 2022

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder associated with cognitive and neurobehavioral disorders. It affects the person's behavior and performance. Autism affects verbal and non-verbal communication in social interactions. Early screening and diagnosis of ASD are essential and helpful for early educational planning and treatment, the provision of family support, and for providing appropriate medical support for the child on time. Thus, developing automated methods for diagnosing ASD is becoming an essential need. Herein, we investigate using various machine learning methods to build predictive models for diagnosing ASD in children using facial images. To achieve this, we used an autistic children dataset containing 2936 facial images of children with autism and typical children. In application, we used classical machine learning methods, such as support vector machine and random forest. In addition to using deep-learning methods, we used a state-of-the-art method, that is, automated machine learning (AutoML). We compared the results obtained from the existing techniques. Consequently, we obtained that AutoML achieved the highest performance of approximately 96% accuracy via the Hyperpot and tree-based pipeline optimization tool optimization. Furthermore, AutoML methods enabled us to easily find the best parameter settings without any human efforts for feature engineering.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.362-371
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate difficulties in using prosodic information to identify the meaning of ambiguous sentences in children with high functioning autism (HFA). Fifteen high functioning autistic children and fifteen children who matched their chronological age (CA) participated in this study. We compared the performance of the two groups by conducting syntactically and affectively ambiguous sentence comprehension (SASC and AASC) tasks. The results of this study show that in both tasks, the difference between the two groups was statistically significant at each condition and the performance of high functioning autistic children was significantly lower. In a correlation analysis of major variables, children who matched CA showed a correlation between prosody-only (PO) and AASC, while children with HFA showed a correlation between PO and MO (morpheme-only). Children with HFA used grammatical morpheme information to understand general sentences. We found that the ability to use prosodic information in children with HFA is significantly lower than that of normally developed children. Considering the relevance of prosody to linguistic, non-linguistic and emotional aspects of communication, improving prosodic perception is thought to be a way to mediate deficits in the comprehension of ambiguous sentences in children with HFA.

• The Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.28-42
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• 2021

Objectives The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Tuina treatment for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and to propose guidance to future studies or application in clinical setting. Methods The articles published from year 2000 to May 2021 by China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were searched by setting up field as '中醫學', '中藥', '中西醫結合' and by setting up keyword as '小儿自閉症', '儿童自閉症', '自閉症譜系障碍', 'Autism', 'Autism spectrum disorder' that corresponds to participant and '推拿', '導引', '按摩', 'Tuina', 'massage'. Results Nine selected articles were analyzed and summarized by authors and year published, characteristics, diagnostic criteria, treatment methods and contents, treatment duration, evaluation criteria and results of the study. The articles were also reviewed by reported side effects, and evaluated the quality of the study according to Cochrane Handbook's Risk of Bias 2 (RoB 2) assessment of the Randomized Control Trial (RCT) articles. All studies used Tuina treatment to achieve effective results for pediatric autism spectrum disorder. Conclusion Pediatric Tuina treatment (TM) is a non-invasive treatment that does not stimulate patients with unstable ASD but increase patient adherence, and can be safely and simply operated. Therefore, pediatric Tuina treatment is worth utilizing as a clinical basis for further development of ASD treatment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.40-55
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to provide basic information on the development of nutrition education programs to improve the mealtime behavior of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by investigating the mealtime behavior and food preferences of children with ASD through the perception of special education teachers. Surveys were given to 108 special education teachers in special education schools in Korea regarding the demographic characteristics, nutrition education support needs, mealtime behavior, and food preferences of children with ASD. Most of the special education teachers responded that nutrition education in special schools had not been conducted properly and nutrition education for ASD children is necessary. Mealtime behavior analysis classified the behavior into three clusters: cluster 1, 'less problematic mealtime behavior'; cluster 2, 'general feature of autism'; cluster 3, 'difficulty in self-directed diet'. The age, eating habits, and food preferences were different according to each mealtime behavior cluster. Therefore, it will be necessary to develop a nutrition education program based on the characteristics of mealtime behavior.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.62 no.4
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• pp.126-130
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• 2019

Purpose: In this meta-analysis, relevant case-control and cohort studies were pooled to evaluate the association between preeclampsia and the risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in children. Methods: A search for relevant studies in major databases, including Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus, was performed up to May 2018. The odds ratios (ORs) or rate ratios (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were extracted from eligible studies to determine the association among studies. Results: The pooled estimates of ORs and RRs indicated a significant association between preeclampsia and ASD [(OR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.12-1.60) and (RR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.20-1.41)]. Conclusions: Despite existing controversy, our findings indicated that preeclampsia was associated with an increased risk of ASD among children.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.394-395
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• 2022

Exergames are playing an important role in healthcare/rehabilitation. It has also been used to improve motivation among patients with reduced cognition. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the feasibility of using augmented reality (AR) with game-based cognitive-motor training programs for executive function, restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRBs) in children with autism spectrum disorder. Sixteen children aged 6 -16 years were randomly allocated to the experimental group and control group. Outcome measures were performed before and after the intervention and included executive function, restricted and repetitive behavior. A satisfactory survey was conducted post-intervention. A statistically significant improvement was observed in working memory and cognitive flexibility in the experimental group (P<0.05). However, despite no statistical improvements in cognitive inhibition and four subscales of RRBs, promising changes were observed in all the subscales of the executive function and the behavioral outcomes. Parents appreciated the program and children enjoyed the interaction with the AR game-based training. The findings of this preliminary feasibility study showed that AR using Kinect v2 motion with a cognitive-motor game content can be used for children with autism. However, there is a need for conducting a large-scale study to evaluate his effectiveness on executive function and restricted and repetitive behaviors.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.125-136
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• 2018

Although atypical sensory processing is a core feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there is considerable heterogeneity among ASD individuals in the modality and symptoms of atypical sensory processing. The present study examined visual processing of children with ASD, focusing on the complexity and orientation of visual information. Age- and -IQ-matched Korean children (14 ASD and 14 typically-developing (TD) children) received an orientation discrimination task involving static spatial gratings varied in complexity (simple versus complex) and orientation (horizontal versus vertical). The results revealed that ASD children had difficulty perceiving complex information regardless of orientation, whereas TD children had more difficulty with vertical gratings than horizontal gratings. Thus, group-level differences between ASD and TD children appeared greater when gratings were presented horizontally. Unlike ASD adult literature, however, ASD children did not show superior performance on simple gratings. Our findings on typical and atypical processing of ASD children have implications for both understanding the characteristics of ASD children and developing diagnostic tools for ASD.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.80-86
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• 2018

The intervention of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is limited research focus on the effect of occupational-based intervention. This study sought to determine the effect of occupational-based intervention of chopstick skills for children with ASD. This study included a total of 3 children with ASD.Using single-subject study design, a changing criterion design and ABC design were implemented. The participants' behavior was observed and recorded throughout each session. In this study, the results were analyzed through visual graphs. The amount of food that was moved using the chopsticks was gradually increased. The results show that all participants significantly improved in their ability to use chopsticks in each intervention session. In addition, Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS) improved the generalization. According to the AMPS, both the overall motor and process skills increased from baseline an average of 0.7 logit. The results of this study showed occupational-based intervention on chopsticks skill to be effective in acquisition and generalization of chopstick skill in children with ASD.