The aim of this study was to understand the diagnostic, service and lived experiences of families affected by ASD in Southeast Europe. A total of 758 caregivers from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Turkey were surveyed from 2013 to 2015 about characteristics of the child with ASD; service encounters; and caregiver perceptions. The average age at first concern was 24.4 months (SD 11.8) and at diagnosis, 40.0 months (SD 19.0). Psychiatrists were the most common diagnostician; most children received some ASD-related service, most frequently speech and language therapy. Caregivers endorsed challenges in access to care and perceived stigma. Despite country differences, findings relative to age at first concern, disparities in access and service utilization, and stigma speak to common regional needs.
Parent training has been shown to be an important means of supporting families living with autism-but such services are not universally accessible. A multinational project funded by the European Commission has been developed in order to establish such parent training in three southeastern European countries. To ensure that the training was relevant and appropriate, a survey was carried out in autumn 2015 to ascertain the attitudes of parents of children with autism in Croatia, Cyprus and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia regarding this issue, and to identify the areas of training that they felt most important. Two hundred and fifty-three surveys were distributed, and 148 were returned, a response rate of 58%. Respondents in the three counties were overwhelmingly positive about parent training, with almost 90% stating that they would like to attend such training. Weekend training sessions were preferred by the majority of respondents. There was wide variation between the three countries with regard to what content was felt important to be included, with parents in the FYR of Macedonia seeking information in the greatest number of areas. Five topics were prioritised by parents across all three countries. These were: • Strategies for enhancing my child's communication • Strategies on facilitating my child's interaction with other children • Sensory integration and development • General information on behavioural management strategies • Identifying and/or developing socialisation opportunities
Exposure to airborne particles in the town of Smederevo, mainly to PM₂.₅, and to low temperature may trigger asthma exacerbation requiring emergency care. The most vulnerable may be women and obese patients.
Many studies have shown that using robot platforms can be effective for teaching children with autism spectrum
disorder (ASD). The aim of this study was to compare performance on an imitation task, as well as focus attention levels and the
presence of social behaviours of children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children during an imitation task under two
different conditions, with robots and human demonstrators. The results suggested that TD children did not imitate more than
children with ASD. Children with ASD did not imitate the robot more than they imitated a person, but they showed more focused
attention to robots and expressed more social behaviours in interaction with the robots. Behaviours that were significantly more
present in ASD children than in TD children included touching the robot in the robot demonstrator condition and focusing on the
robot in the person demonstrator condition. This implies a possible preference of children with ASD towards robots rather than
towards people.
Notwithstanding intensive research and many scientific advances, diagnosing autism spectrum disorders remains a slow and tedious process. Due to the absence of any physiological tests, the outcome depends solely on the expertise of the clinician, which takes years to acquire. Complicating the matter further, research has shown that inter-rater reliability can be very low, even among experienced clinicians. As an attempt to facilitate the diagnostic process and make it more objective, this paper proposes a robot-assisted diagnostic protocol. The expected benefit of using a robot is twofold: the robot always performs its actions in a predictable and consistent way, and it can use its sensors to catch aspects of a child's behavior that a human examiner can miss. In this paper, we describe four tasks from the widely accepted ADOS protocol, that have been adapted to make them suitable for the Aldebaran Nao humanoid robot. These tasks include evaluating the child's response to being called by name, symbolic and functional imitation, joint attention and assessing the child's ability to simultaneously communicate on multiple channels. All four tasks have been implemented on the robot's onboard computer and are performed autonomously. As the main contribution of the paper, we present the results of the initial batch of four clinical trials of the proposed robot assisted diagnostic protocol, performed on a population of preschool children. The results of the robot's observations are benchmarked against the findings of experienced clinicians. Emphasis is placed on evaluating robot performance, in order to assess the feasibility of a robot eventually becoming an assistant in the diagnostic process. The obtained results indicate that the use of robots as autism diagnostic assistants is a promising approach, but much work remains to be done before they become useful diagnostic tools.
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