My group and I chose the article “Complexity Analysis of Head Movements In Autistic Toddlers.

Autism, also called autism spectrum disorder, is a neurodevelopmental condition. It is a serious nervous

system developmental disorder that can impair a child's ability to communicate and interact. The

symptoms associated with autism can vary in range and severity. Being able to recognize it early

combined with behavioral, educational, and family therapies may reduce the symptoms and support

development and learning.

In the article the researchers stated they wanted to replicate earlier findings that suggested autistic

children show a greater rate in head movement compared to neurotypical children, but this time using a

larger sample, using similar movies, and not only focusing on the rate of head movements but their

acceleration and complexity as well. The sample size consisted of 457 toddlers that aged between 17 to 36

months old. They completed this study at the children's well visit in four primary care clinics for

pediatrics. To obtain their data they would have the toddler sit in their caregivers lab and watch a tablet

that was programmed with an application that would play brief movies for the child to watch. The movie

content included social and nonsocial. Social movies contained human actors while nonsocial movies

contained dynamic objects. The tablets had a front facing camera which had the ability to record the

toddler and measure their behaviors such as head movement rate, acceleration, and complexity. They then

compared this data with that of neurotypical toddlers. To ensure fair data the rooms at the four clinics

were similar in size, lighting, and distractions. They made sure the caregiver did not cue the child and that

others present in the room, such as the assistant for the study and family members, sat behind the

caregiver to lessen distractions for the child. All together the children watched 4 high social movies and 3

nonsocial movies. Of the 457 toddlers only 41 were diagnosed with autism.

After computing all of the data, they came to the conclusion that of the 457 toddlers those 41

diagnosed with autism showed a higher rate of head movements while watching the movies, regardless of

social or nonsocial content. Though there was not a significant difference in results for the two groups,

they found greater acceleration and complexity of the head movements in the 41 autistic toddlers

compared to the 416 neurotypical toddlers. Their findings were suggestive that sensorimotor behavior
characterized by frequent head movements having higher acceleration and more complexity is an early

feature of autism. This study can be helpful to children and their families as a tool in toddler well-visits

with their pediatricians to lead to early identification of the disorder. If not leading to a direct diagnosis it

can be helpful in pushing families and pediatricians to do more testing and start behavioral, educational,

and family therapies. Early identification is key for the child to hopefully lead to better outcomes with

growth and development. Parents should be educated on signs and symptoms of autism so that they can

better understand children with autism and know what to look for so they can hopefully seek early

intervention.