scholarly journals Effects of Dog-Assisted Education on Physical and Communicative Skills in Children with Severe and Multiple Disabilities: A Pilot Study

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1741
Author(s):  
Luis Lucio Lobato Rincón ◽  
Beatriz Rivera Martín ◽  
María Ángeles Medina Sánchez ◽  
Santos Villafaina ◽  
Eugenio Merellano-Navarro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Motor Coordination ◽  
Multiple Disabilities ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Communicative Skills ◽  
Spontaneous Interaction ◽  
Different Populations ◽  
Severe And Multiple Disabilities ◽  
Animal Interaction

Animal-assisted interventions have shown promising benefits in different populations such as children with cerebral palsy or autism spectrum disorder. Human–animal interaction leads to different physical, cognitive, and emotional benefits in the child. The aim of the current pilot study was to evaluate the effects of a dog-assisted education program on the postural, oculomotor, linguistic and autonomy dimensions in children affected by severe and multiple disabilities. Fourteen children aged 3–12 years and affected by intellectual and physical disabilities participated in a dog-assisted program consisted of 12 sessions. The intervention involved different types of activities, exercises, and games with the dogs. A strict protocol to ensure animal wellbeing and avoid any type of stress or fatigue was followed. Children who participated in the study improved their postural control, eye-motor coordination, expression of sensations and feelings, spontaneous interaction, autonomy, and confidence. However, these results must be taken with caution due to the lack of a control group and the heterogeneity of the participants.

scholarly journals Improving Emotion Regulation with CBT in Young Children with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Pilot Study

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Scarpa ◽  
Nuri M. Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Autism Spectrum Disorders ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Young Children ◽  
High Functioning Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Control Group ◽  
High Functioning ◽  
Delayed Treatment ◽  
Spectrum Disorders

Background and Aims: This pilot study tested the efficacy of a developmentally modified CBT for young children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to teach emotion regulation strategies for reducing anger and anxiety, commonly noted problems in this population. Method: Eleven 5–7 year-old children participated in a CBT-group while parents participated in psychoeducation. Children were randomly assigned to an experimental or delayed-treatment control group. Results: From pre- to post-treatment, all children had less parent reported negativity/lability, better parent reported emotion regulation, and shorter outbursts, and also generated more coping strategies in response to vignettes. Parents also reported increases in their own confidence and their child's ability to deal with anger and anxiety. Conclusions: This study suggests that young children with high functioning ASD may benefit from CBT to improve regulation of anger and anxiety, and parent training may improve parental self-efficacy. Future studies are needed to make conclusions about its efficacy.

scholarly journals Motor and sensory features successfully decode autism spectrum disorder and combine with the original RDoC framework to boost diagnostic classification

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura A. Harrison ◽  
Anastasiya Kats ◽  
Emily Kilroy ◽  
Christiana Butera ◽  
Aditya Jayashankar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Motor Coordination ◽  
Developmental Coordination Disorder ◽  
Null Distribution ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Sensory Features

AbstractSensory processing and motor coordination atypicalities are not commonly identified as primary characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), nor are they well captured in the NIMH’s original Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework. Here, motor and sensory features performed similarly to RDoC features in support vector classification of 30 ASD youth against 33 typically developing controls. Combining sensory with RDoC features boosted classification performance, achieving a Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) of 0.949 and balanced accuracy (BAcc) of 0.971 (p = 0.00020, calculated against a permuted null distribution). Sensory features alone successfully classified ASD (MCC = 0.565, BAcc = 0.773, p = 0.0222) against a clinically relevant control group of 26 youth with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) and were in fact required to decode against DCD above chance. These findings highlight the importance of sensory and motor features to the ASD phenotype and their relevance to the RDoC framework.

Comparing the Genetic Detox Ability and Heavy Metal Burden in a Cohort of Samples of Egyptian Children and those with Autistic Spectrum Disorder

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blaurock-Busch E
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Potentially Toxic Metals ◽  
Gstt1 Null Genotype ◽  
Egyptian Children ◽  
Glutathione S Transferases ◽  
Metal Burden ◽  
Detoxification Pathway

The heavy metal burden of patients with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has been widely discussed [1-5]. Present knowledge suggests that ASD patients, compared to ‘normal’s’ show a greater metal burden, which may be a cause of the ASD pathogenesis, possibly due to a limited detoxification potential. We thus aimed to evaluate if the metal burden of ASD children is due to comprised detoxification ability, and if missing of enzymes such as the glutathione-S-transferases provide an explanation, or if additional factors play a role. Genetically, we noticed a slight difference in the detoxification ability of the ASD group compared to the Control group. In the ASD group, carrier of the genotype GSTT1 null genotype (i.e. the homozygous loss) are 1.7 times more common as in the Control group and the GSTT1 allele is more frequent in the ASD patient collective. These findings are not statistically significant but indicate a trend. In addition, our data indicates that levels of potentially toxic metals in blood and hair of both groups demonstrate a similar immediate and long-term exposure. However, 36% of the ASD group showed signs of zinc deficiency compared to 11% of the Control group and this points towards inefficiency of the Phase I detoxification pathway. More research is needed to explore the role of other elements in the detoxification pathway.

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