Device Can Screen Speech To Diagnose Autism
Doctors may be able to use a small recording device to automatically screen young children for autism based on how they talk, US researchers said on Monday.
The small device fits into a child’s pocket and analyzes words spoken by the child during the day. A software program then evaluates how the child makes certain sounds.
A group of researchers led by Kimbrough Oller at the University of Memphis analyzed more than 3 million words collected from 232 children between 10 months and 4 years old.
The program correctly identified an existing autism diagnosis 86 percent of the time. The analysis also predicted the age of a developing child, according to study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Although clinicians have been saying for many years that they think that autistic kids sound strange when they talk, there’s been no practical way to use vocalization as a part of the diagnostic or screening procedure in working with autism,” Oller told Reuters.
Oller, a professor of audiology and speech-language pathology, was able to identify speech patterns the device analyzes and helped develop the screening method.
Although the tests were conducted in English, Oller said the technique could apply to other languages easily. “It hasn’t actually been tried yet, but there’s every reason to think it should,” he said.
Autism diagnosis is usually done by testing children for a range of behavioral and speech issues including how much they talk by a certain age and whether they make eye contact with other people.
There are many behavioral patterns to consider when diagnosing autism, and “vocalization is clearly an important one,” Oller said. “But I certainly don’t think it should be used exclusively.”
Oller has identified how formation of different syllables changes during a child’s first four years of speech. Instead of saying “ba” as part of a longer word, for example, a young child might at first say “ba-a” with “sort of a staccato or tremor kind of pattern,” he said. Speech development of autistic children does not follow those typical patterns, according to analysis.
Once a child has recorded a day’s length worth of speech on the device, parents send the recorded information back to the company for analysis. The company analyzes the data for language development progress and autism.
Infoture Inc developed the device and the software. The company dissolved in February 2009 and was reconstituted as the LENA Foundation — a not-for-profit organization which funds the research. The foundation sells the device along with clothing with a pocket to hold the recorder.
Oller received consultation fees from Infoture before it dissolved and several of the other researchers are employees of the LENA Foundation.
—
On the Net: