EshanMaitra
Autism has become a very well-known matter. Parents these days are much sincerer and open-minded about to getting the right treatment their children sooner. Currently many private organizations are working on helping these special children. Even Government has taken several projects. Meanwhile in USA, two separate groups of researcherswere successful to find a better, simpler and objective technique for Autism Diagnosis of a children. In these procedure, parents would feel more comfortable to get their children the proper treatments from the very early age.
Both of the researchers’ teams adapted the technique of eye tracking with average modern tools and software.
One researchers’ group is led by Thomas Frazieof Cleveland Clinic, Ohio. According to Gizmag reports they were 80 percent successful in identifying the severity of their patients. They observed the amount of time the children could keep focus on certain series of images or videos. The result varies from children to children depending on their mental condition and health.
Another group was a group of researchers from University of Vermont. They have used very common tools, Skype and an Eye Tracker System called Mirametrix S2. With these they observed how long a child focuses on the speaker’s mouth while having a conversation. They said, when the conversation gets much into emotional subjects, it gets a bit critical for the children with autism to understand. That is why, they look for direct accessible information from the mouth, to ease the pressure on the executive functions of the brain and memory processing.
Tiffany Hutchins of the Vermont team said, they were very surprised that none has ever before tried this method. It is an amazingly the most useful procedure. Usually children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), has to go through loads of parental reports, clinical observations and personal interviews to get to a conclusion. This often discourages the parents. But their new ways of diagnosis can really speed up the process and be more effective than ever before. It will even allow the speech therapists to treat children with ASD in much more helpful manner at very early stage.
Though both of the researches were based on about 50 children each. Comparatively on a very low bunch. Still, the promising facts has led them think about bigger research project, to establish a better theory.