Assessment of speech- and fine-motor coordination and their link to language in children with autism spectrum disorder

项目总结 自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)是一种与言语运动障碍相关的神经发育障碍 生产和精细运动任务。然而，对运动障碍的评估可能是主观的，漏掉了细微的东西。 以及特定的异常。因此，有必要制定客观的措施，供临床医生评估和 了解自闭症患者的言语和精细运动障碍。此外，最近的研究表明 言语产生、精细运动和眼球运动任务的困难可能会导致语言困难 在ASD中。这个项目的目的是开发客观的测量言语和精细动作协调的方法 儿童自闭症，并表征运动方式和表达语言之间的关系 使用这些措施的ASD。我们将重点介绍三个语音子系统：发音、喉咙和呼吸， 以及笔迹和眼球运动。在我们在鲁里自闭症中心进行的一项初步研究中，我们 利用我们实验室开发的新协调功能来突出协调的复杂性更低或更高 言语活跃的自闭症儿童言语子系统之间和内部的耦合与神经型的比较 控制。分析还表明，患有自闭症的儿童在书写时协调的复杂性较低， 这表明在这些运动系统中可能存在类似的潜在机制。在拟议的项目中， 我们将在这些有希望的结果的基础上，使用低水平特征来评估运动协调的测量 源自患有自闭症和神经典型的儿童完成的语音、手写和眼动任务 控制。我们将使用声学到发音的倒置技术来提取更准确的生理 声道发音器的运动和协调。目标1使用协调度量来表征 自闭症儿童言语和精细运动协调的复杂性。我们还将确定这些功能 在ASD儿童和神经典型对照之间提供了最高的区分能力 机器学习模型。我们预计，确定复杂和重要的歧视性模式 这些功能将更好地了解电机子系统之间和内部的依赖关系， 可用于ASD患者运动障碍的客观评估和追踪。目标2描述了 言语和精细动作技能与表达语言能力之间的关系。我们将评估相关性 以及运动协调性测量和表达语言评估分数之间的回归。 我们相信，与语言能力评估高度相关的运动任务和特征将会 进一步深入了解自闭症患者的运动模式与语言障碍之间的关系。总而言之， 这项建议旨在量化和理解ASD使用中的言语和精细运动协调挑战 运动协调的客观测量，目的是表征言语和精细之间的关系 ASD中的运动子系统和表达语言。这个项目朝着我们发展的长期目标努力。 评估、了解和跟踪自闭症儿童的运动和沟通挑战的平台。

PROJECT SUMMARY Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with motor difficulties in speech production and fine-motor tasks. Assessments of motor impairments, however, can be subjective and miss subtle and specific abnormalities. Therefore, there is a need to develop objective measures for clinicians to assess and understand speech- and fine-motor impairments in individuals with ASD. In addition, recent research suggests that difficulties with speech production, fine-motor, and oculo-motor tasks may contribute to language difficulties in ASD. The purpose of this project is to develop objective measures of speech- and fine-motor coordination in children with ASD, and to characterize the relationship between motor modalities and expressive language in ASD using these measures. We will focus on three speech subsystems: articulatory, laryngeal, and respiratory, as well as handwriting and eye movement. In a pilot study we conducted at the Lurie Center for Autism, we utilized novel coordination features developed in our lab to highlight lower complexity of coordination, or higher coupling, between and within speech subsystems in highly verbal children with ASD as compared to neurotypical controls. The analyses also indicated lower complexity of coordination during handwriting in children with ASD, suggesting there may be similar underlying mechanisms across these motor systems. In the proposed project, we will extend upon these promising results, evaluating measures of motor coordination using low-level features derived from speech, handwriting, and eye movement tasks completed by children with ASD and neurotypical controls. We will employ acoustic-to-articulatory inversion techniques to extract more physiologically accurate vocal tract articulator movements and coordination. Aim 1 uses measures of coordination to characterize the complexity of speech- and fine-motor coordination in children with ASD. We will also determine the features which provide the highest discriminatory ability between children with ASD and neurotypical controls using machine learning models. We expect that identification of patterns of complexity and important discriminatory features will provide a better understanding of the dependencies across and within motor subsystems, which could be used for objective assessment and tracking of motor difficulties in ASD. Aim 2 characterizes the relationship between speech- and fine-motor skills and expressive language ability. We will evaluate correlations and regressions between measures of motor coordination and scores on assessments of expressive language. We believe that motor tasks and features which show high correlations with evaluations of language ability will provide further insight into how motor modalities are associated with language difficulties in ASD. In summary, this proposal aims to quantify and understand speech- and fine-motor coordination challenges in ASD using objective measures of motor coordination, and aims to characterize the relationship between speech- and fine- motor subsystems and expressive language in ASD. This project works towards our long-term goal of developing a platform to assess, understand, and track motor and communication challenges in children with ASD.