Sensory and repetitive behaviors among children with autism spectrum disorder at home

Abstract

Atypical sensory and repetitive behaviors are defining features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and are thought to be influenced by environmental factors; however, there is a lack of naturalistic research exploring contexts surrounding these behaviors. The current study involved video recording observations of 32 children with ASD (2 – 12 years of age) engaging in sensory and repetitive behaviors during home activities. Behavioral coding was used to determine what activity contexts, sensory modalities, and stimulus characteristics were associated with specific behavior types: hyperresponsive, hyporesponsive, sensory seeking, and repetitive/stereotypic. Results indicated that hyperresponsive behaviors were most associated with activities of daily living and family-initiated stimuli, whereas sensory seeking behaviors were associated with free play activities and child-initiated stimuli. Behaviors associated with multiple sensory modalities simultaneously were common, emphasizing the multi-sensory nature of children’s behaviors in natural contexts. Implications for future research more explicitly considering context are discussed.

Do Tangible User Interfaces promote social behaviour during free play? A comparison of autistic and typically-developing children playing with passive and digital construction toys

“…jokes between participants. Finally, we introduced Kirby et al 's (Kirby, Boyd, Williams, Faldowski, & Baranek, 2017) criteria for recognising repetitive behaviours considered common of children with autism (Boyd et al, 2010).…”

A longitudinal study of parent‐reported sensory responsiveness in toddlers at‐risk for autism

“…While theoretical links between sensory responsiveness and RRB have not been well‐developed, there is empirical support for their alignment overall (Boyd et al., ; Chen, Rodgers, & McConachie, ; Rogers, Hepburn, & Wehner, ; Wigham, Rodgers, South, McConachie, & Freeston, ). How these associations hold up at a more fine grained level is less clear, and may vary across children as well as across development (Ausderau, Furlong, et al., ; Ausderau, Sideri, et al., ; Boyd et al., ; Kirby, Boyd, Williams, Faldowski, & Baranek, ). Reports on the codevelopment of sensory responsiveness and RRB during the first years of life are particularly limited.…”

Holographic Kinetics for a Child Suffering from Autism with Extreme Aggressive Behavioral Disorder

“…Many studies have been done to understand why repetitive behaviors affect autistic people in their lives. In fact, a study done by Anne V Kirby et al, mentions the DSM-5 puts unusual sensory responses and repetitive behaviors in the same sub grouping for classification of ASD, although their research says these two behaviors are conceptually distinct [4].…”

“…There is no one way to treat a person with autism spectrum disorder because not all people on the spectrum exhibit every symptom. According to research, there is only one child, out of 32 children, engaged in all four types of coded behavior mentioned above [4]. When researching methods to treat or study autism, one cannot make assumptions about their symptoms because of the criteria listed in the DSM.…”

“…Klei et al, found that in a family with only one ASD member, the "portion of liability can be explained by additive genetic effects (narrow-sense heritability) 40% of the time". In a family with multiple members diagnosed with ASD, narrow-sense heritability exceeds 60% [4]. Specifically, this genetic polymorphism could be coming from the sensitivity of the developing brain to external exposures such as vaccines, lead, ethyl alcohol and methyl mercury, and exposures in early pregnancy.…”