• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.28-36
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• 2016

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to achieve a vision for autistic children and their parents aimed at generating interest in ideas such as "Sanitas Per Aquam" (SPA), massage and music therapy, which has begun to have widespread use and to attract attention. Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive study was carried out with autistic children and their parents from February to April 2015 in $Mu{\breve{g}}la$, Turkey. The study was began by interviewing experts in the field and by developing a suitable assessment questionnaire. In order to direct the flow of conversation between the researchers and the autisitc children and their parents, the researchers conducted semi-structured face to face interviews in a form that had been determined by using reports in the literature and the opinions of experts in the field. Results: Forty two boys (84%) and eight girls (16%) with autism participated in our study. Children in the 0 - 7 age group spent long time in the bathroom (P = 0.001). Boys liked to be hugged more than girls (P = 0.01). Children ages 0 - 7 years liked bright lighting while those 15 years of age and older liked gloomy lighting (P = 0.009). Except for these statistically significant sex- and age-related differences, no other statistically significant differences were noted in the parameters of this study. Although the result was not statistically significant, more children with mild autism disorder obeyed commands like inhale or exhale (P = 0.051). Conclusion: Treatment for autism spectrum disorders is not yet fully possible, so many studies are being done to alleviate some symptoms and to improve the quality of life for individuals with autism and their families. As a result of our study, whether touching the areas the children want touched and listening to their favorite music are required to stimulate the brain remain as questions in our minds.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.131-140
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• 2021

Purpose : The purpose of this study was to systematically review the studies on the effects of social story intervention on the individuals with autism spectrum disorders(ASD) to provide the basis for evidence-based practice. Methods : In order to find out the studies on the effect of social story intervention on individuals with ASD, studies published from 2011 to December 2020 were searched on Google Academic Search. The keywords used were "autism spectrum disorder AND social story". A total of 16,900 studies were searched, and from these, 12 studies were selected based on the application of the selection and exclusion criteria. The included studies comprised of 10 single subject design studies and 2 randomized controlled trials design studies. The included studies were analyzed in accordance to population, intervention, outcome measures and results. Results : As a result of analysing the subjects of the included studies, we found out that pre-school children and adolescents were the most common groups of individuals diagnozsed with ASD. In addition to ASD, the diagnosis of the subjects included intellectual disability, Asperger, and Prader-willi. We found out that there were more interventions that were mixed with other interventions, than just the pure social story interventions. In particular, video modeling was found to be the most frequent intervention. This was followed by photo-based social stories. For outcome measure, autism social skills profile was found to be the most often used standardized assessment. For a non-standardized assessment, social desired behavior was found to be the most frequently evaluated behavior, followed by personal problem behavior. Of all the dependent variables, the dependent variable reported as "effective" was the most, followed by "some effective". Conclusion : This study is organized to help the individuals with ASD, families, researchers, and therapists understand the effects of social story intervention on the individuals with ASD in an easy fashion. Further, therapists can use this study as the basic data for evidence-based practice.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.53-59
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• 2023

Detection of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) based on speech has relied on predefined feature sets due to their ease of use and the capabilities of speech analysis. However, clinical impressions may not be adequately captured due to the broad range and the large number of features included. This paper demonstrates that the knowledge-driven speech features (KDSFs) specifically tailored to the speech traits of ASD are more effective and efficient for detecting speech of ASD children from that of children with typical development (TD) than a predefined feature set, extended Geneva Minimalistic Acoustic Standard Parameter Set (eGeMAPS). The KDSFs encompass various speech characteristics related to frequency, voice quality, speech rate, and spectral features, that have been identified as corresponding to certain of their distinctive attributes of them. The speech dataset used for the experiments consists of 63 ASD children and 9 TD children. To alleviate the imbalance in the number of training utterances, a data augmentation technique was applied to TD children's utterances. The support vector machine (SVM) classifier trained with the KDSFs achieved an accuracy of 91.25%, surpassing the 88.08% obtained using the predefined set. This result underscores the importance of incorporating domain knowledge in the development of speech technologies for individuals with disorders.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.47-54
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• 2020

Developmental disorders are impairments of brain and/or central nervous system and refer to a disorder of brain function that affects languages, communication skills, perception, sociality and so on. In diagnosis of developmental disorders, behavioral response such as expressing emotions in proper situation is one of observable indicators that tells whether or not individual has the disorders. However, diagnosis by observation can allow subjective evaluation that leads erroneous conclusion. This research presents the technological environment and data acquisition system for AI based screening of autism disorder. The environment was built considering activities for two screening protocols, namely Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) and Behavior Development Screening for Toddler (BeDevel). The activities between therapist and baby during the screening are fully recorded. The proposed software in this research was designed to support recording, monitoring and data tagging for learning AI algorithms.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.207-243
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• 2016

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by social and communication impairments, as well as repetitive and restrictive behaviors. The phenotypic heterogeneity of ASD has made it overwhelmingly difficult to determine the exact etiology and pathophysiology underlying the core symptoms, which are often accompanied by comorbidities such as hyperactivity, seizures, and sensorimotor abnormalities. To our benefit, the advent of animal models has allowed us to assess and test diverse risk factors of ASD, both genetic and environmental, and measure their contribution to the manifestation of autistic symptoms. At a broader scale, rodent models have helped consolidate molecular pathways and unify the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying each one of the various etiologies. This approach will potentially enable the stratification of ASD into clinical, molecular, and neurophenotypic subgroups, further proving their translational utility. It is henceforth paramount to establish a common ground of mechanistic theories from complementing results in preclinical research. In this review, we cluster the ASD animal models into lesion and genetic models and further classify them based on the corresponding environmental, epigenetic and genetic factors. Finally, we summarize the symptoms and neuropathological highlights for each model and make critical comparisons that elucidate their clinical and neurobiological relevance.

• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.230-237
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• 2015

Purpose: Various gastrointestinal factors may contribute to maladaptive behavior in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). To determine the association between maladaptive behavior in children with ASD and gastrointestinal symptoms such as severity, intestinal microbiota, inflammation, enterocyte damage, permeability and absorption of opioid peptides. Methods: This observational cross-sectional study compared children with ASD to healthy controls, aged 2-10 years. Maladaptive behavior was classified using the Approach Withdrawal Problems Composite subtest of the Pervasive Developmental Disorder Behavior Inventory. Dependent variables were gastrointestinal symptom severity index, fecal calprotectin, urinary D-lactate, urinary lactulose/mannitol excretion, urinary intestinal fatty acids binding protein (I-FABP) and urinary opioid peptide excretion. Results: We did not find a significant difference between children with ASD with severe or mild maladaptive behavior and control subjects for gastrointestinal symptoms, fecal calprotectin, urinary D-lactate, and lactulose/mannitol ratio. Urinary opioid peptide excretion was absent in all children. Children with ASD with severe maladaptive behavior showed significantly higher urinary I-FABP levels compared to those with mild maladaptive behavior (p=0.019) and controls (p=0.015). Conclusion: In our series, maladaptive behavior in ASD children was not associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, intestinal inflammation (no difference in calprotectin), microbiota (no difference in urinary D-lactate) and intestinal permeability (no difference in lactulose/manitol ratio). ASD children with severe maladaptive behavior have significantly more enterocyte damage (increased urinary I-FABP) than ASD children with mild maladaptive behavior and normal children.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.77-90
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• 2018

Behavioral studies of emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have yielded mixed results. Most of the studies focused on emotion recognition abilities with regard to ASD using stimuli with unisensory modality, making it difficult to determine difficulties in real life emotion perception in ASD. Herein, we review the recent behavioral and cognitive neuroscience studies on emotion recognition functions in ASD, including both unisensory and multisensory emotional information, to elucidate the possible difficulties in emotion recognition in ASD. In our study, we discovered that people with ASD have problems in the process of integrating emotional information during emotion recognition tasks. The following four points are discussed: (1) The restrictions of previous studies, (2) deficits in emotion recognition in ASD especially in recognizing multisensory information, (3) possible compensation mechanisms for emotion recognition in ASD, and (4) the possible roles of attention and language functions in emotion recognition in ASD. The compensatory mechanisms proposed herein for ASD with regard to emotion recognition abilities could contribute to a therapeutic approach for improving emotion recognition functions in ASD.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.187-195
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• 2014

Objectives : The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between restricted, repetitive behaviors and interests (RRBI) and autistic symptoms in Korean high functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children and to examine the structure of RRBI. Methods : Participants included 147 high functioning ASD subjects and 181 unaffected siblings. ASD subjects were divided into two groups based on the presence of RRBI. The domain scores of the Korean version of Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (K-ADI-R), Korean version of Asperger Syndrome Diagnostic Scale and total scores of Korean translated version of Social Responsiveness Scale, Korean version of Social Communication Scale were used for comparison of ASD symptoms between the groups. Eleven items from the RRBI domain of the K-ADI-R were used in principal axis factor analysis (PAF). Results : A statistically lower nonverbal IQ score was observed for ASD with RRBI than for ASD without RRBIs, and more social deficit, communication deficit, and behavioral and emotional problems were observed for ASD with RRBI compared to ASD without RRBI. Using PAF, two distinct factors were identified. 'Resistance to trivial changes in environment', 'Difficulty with minor changes in personal routine & environment', and 'Compulsion/ritual' were included as one factor. Conclusion : Analysis of the data suggests that the presence of RRBI in high functioning ASD is associated with a more severe presentation of autistic disorder. In addition, there appears to be heterogeneity within RRBI in autism except insistence on sameness.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.64 no.11
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• pp.596-598
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• 2021

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.133-142
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• 2020

Purpose : The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in social quotient and sensory processing function between completed-toileting and incomplete-toileting children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We aims to provide a basis for the training of children with autism spectrum disorders. Methods : The subjects of this research were children with ASD, aged from 4 to 7, receiving sensory integration therapy at the H-Child Development Research Center in Busan, South Korea. After recruiting 30 parents who had children with ASD, we interviewed them and we divided their children into completed-toileting group and incomplete-toileting group based on the past researches. We assessed them using the Social Maturity Scale and Sensory Profile. Spearman correlation was used to analyze between the sensory processing score and social quotient. Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the Sensory Profile scores of the two groups. Results : The social quotient was correlated with the sensory processing score in the most of component as for auditory processing, vestibular processing, touch processing, multisensory processing, orosensory processing, except for visual processing. The groups of completed-toileting and incomplete-toileting group showed statistically significant intergroup difference in sensory seeking, emotional reactive, oral-sensory sensitivity, and inattention/distractibility in the sensory factor region. No statistically significant difference from intergroup was observed in any modulation areas, nor in behavioral & emotional response domains. Conclusion : A significant intergroup difference was observed in the most of sensory processing areas, except for modulation areas and behavioral & emotional response domains. The result revealed that toileting is significantly correlated with sensory processing. Therefore, this study suggests that the sensory processing function should be considered in the toilet training of children with ASD.