Play Therapy for Children With Neurodevelopmental Disorders

A play is referred to the language of children through which they express and communicate their feelings, thoughts, and behavior in a playful way. Play therapy enables children to gain an understanding of themselves and the world around them and helps them to overcome behavioral, emotional, social, and various other issues through play activities. The chapter majorly focuses on the effectiveness of play therapy in different neurodevelopmental disorders. Recent trends and studies suggested that play therapy is one of the most favored therapeutic approaches used in the children with various neurodevelopmental disorders.

Application of Bio-Feedback in Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Biofeedback is a non-invasive process to electronically monitor normal automatic bodily function to acquire its voluntary control. Traditional medical models place the onus on the physician to “cure” the illness. Biofeedback places responsibility on the patient to gain self-control. Its application as evidence-based practice in neurodevelopmental disorders is a nascent, unexplored, and debated area of study. This chapter outlines the meaning, nature, types, protocols, procedure, practices, challenges, benefits, and limitations in its use. Its history is traced for efficacy vis-à-vis other treatments, and other issues like cost-effectiveness, certification of professionals, gadget-enabled, and computer-assisted variants. Studies have attempted, albeit with methodological limitations, to validate its utility for neurodevelopmental disorders without any definitive or conclusive evidence for or against its use given the inability to replicate results, control or exclude confounding factors, placebo effects, and/or bias. An agenda for prospective research is given.

Animal-Assisted Therapy as a Treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Research studies report that animal-assisted therapy (AAT) may be an effective alternative method for treating autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the presence of many methodological weaknesses and the limited replication of such studies have resulted in divided opinion on the actual effectiveness of AAT for treating ASD, and much hesitancy surrounding its use. Reliable clinically based studies must be conducted if this uncertainty is to be put to rest. Because these studies require the participation of physicians who are often hesitant to participate, it is suggested that leadership interventions be used as tools to encourage their participation in AAT research. This chapter aims to discuss the necessity for physician participation, the reasons for the lack of clinician participation in such research, and recommendations for encouraging physician and policymaker participation in specifically targeted research studies.

LearnEasy-Android Application as a Technological Intervention for Children With Dyslexia

The recent studies show that the children with learning disabilities numbers have been gradually increased in India. Though the main reason for the cause of this disorder is unknown, the authors strongly believe that this neurological disorder is explained as a genetic disorder passed from elder hierarchy to the next generation. With the available resources, the awareness programs are limited to urban areas only on account of using current technology in diagnosing disorders. In developed countries, it is seen that new technologies taking birth every day for the treatment of these disorders. This includes LCD 3D display, Kinect games, computer games (psychotherapeutic) in therapy sessions, etc. These kinds of games make children more attentive towards the intervention bringing new changes in the day-to-day lives of the children. In this chapter, a new algorithm has been highlighted for the intervention of children with dyslexia by using the Android application as a source to increase the level of perception and sound-symbol association of the respective alphabets used and studied.

Autism and Diet

The parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often try alternative treatments to reduce their children's symptoms, and one of the alternatives is a specialized diet. This diet is called gluten-free casein-free or GFCF diet. The GFCF diet has grown popular over the years. These children may be sensitive to the taste, smell, color, and texture of foods. They may limit or totally avoid some foods and even whole food groups. They may have difficulty focusing on one task for an extended period of time. It may be hard for a child to sit down and eat a meal from start to finish. The chapter highlights the impact of maternal nutrition, nutritional deficiencies, and GFCF diet in ASD.

Feeding and Swallowing Issues in Children With Neuro-Developmental Disorders

The chapter highlights the feeding and swallowing issues seen in children with neuro-developmental disorders, types, and extent of the problem across different disorders; its relation with the neuro-development of the child; effect on the quality of life of the parents/caregivers along with the child, specifically in the Indian context. It also focuses on the importance of assessment, team approach, and review of available tests for the assessment of feeding and swallowing problems in these children. The chapter is also going to give a few insights into the challenges faced by speech-language pathologists during the assessment of the feeding and swallowing issues in these children in the Indian scenario. The chapter will also include a section on applications of ICF model to feeding and swallowing issues in children with neurodevelopmental disorders.

Neurodevelopmental Disorders From a Clinical Linguistics Perspective

The chapter attempts at bringing out an overview of linguistic-based deficits in neurodevelopmental disordered (NDD) population. Clinical linguistics as a discipline has provided a different dimension to view each patient as a distinctive case and has brought out the utilization of comprehensive depiction of individual skill patterns and deficits. As the NDDs are heterogeneous in nature, understanding their language deficits using achievement tests might not provide a clear description of these disorders. Hence, controlled experimental investigations using varied methodological designs could help in tapping their common linguistic variations which may augment key professionals to better identify, assess, and rehabilitate these individuals. While appreciating all these factors, the chapter provides first-hand information on some of the neuro-developmental disorders and also the language-based diagnostic markers to identify them.

Auditory Profile of Children With Some Rare Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Neurodevelopmental disorder is an umbrella term comprising many muscular, skeletal, metabolic, endocrinal, systemic, and immune-related diseases, which are caused due to the improper/inaccurate development of the central nervous system. Most of these disorders are highly prevalent, but some express rarely in human beings. Such disorders with least prevalence rates are known as rare neurodevelopmental disorders. The sensory system is affected in all individuals with these rare neurodevelopmental disorders, although to a varying extent. Sensory processing in terms of hearing loss is reported by many researchers in many rare neurodevelopmental disorders, but the pathophysiology of audiological findings are seldom investigated. In this chapter, the authors highlight the possible relationship between underlying cause and the resultant audiological symptoms in some of the rare neurodevelopmental disorders. Further, the research studies on the audiological profiling in such disorders are discussed.

Eye Tracking as a Tool for Diagnosing Specific Learning Disabilities

The chapter intends to highlight the use of eye tracker, a tool that tracks eye movements, as a potential tool to aid diagnosis of specific learning disabilities along with psychometric tests. The issue of identifying and assessing children for specific learning disabilities is very difficult and crucial for the psychological, social, and personal wellbeing of the child growing into an adult. A common technique for diagnosing specific learning disabilities is the need of the hour. The eye is considered to be the window to the brain. Any differences in the eye movement can reflect disorders or diseases in the functional areas of cerebral cortex, brain stem, cerebellum, and other areas of the brain. The most important contribution of eye tracking research is it allows examination of different aspects of cognitive performance in moment-to-moment details on very simple tasks and infer the neurobiological basis of cognitive processes. Therefore, the chapter focuses on studies related to use of eye trackers as a futuristic technique in the diagnosis of specific learning disabilities.

Eye Tracker

The high prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has provided a spectrum of diagnostic methodologies ranging from screening scales to technological techniques. The technology-based techniques, especially eye trackers, are shifting the traditional subjective approaches to objective, leading to early ASD screening and intervention. The eye gaze deficits marked by eye trackers are the valid biomarkers of ASD, but the trackers are not clinically available. Another reason for non-availability is the limited number of methodologies which can meaningfully analyze gaze data. The assistance of new technologies into eye tracker system explored here can (1) detect gaze patterns and cognitive abilities of individuals at the single platform and (2) analyze eye movements and events automatically using deep learning system rather than manual interpretation of raw data. These types of systems, if implemented, have the potential to assist clinicians for better ASD diagnosis and intervention approaches.