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Practice Track: A Learning Tracker using Digital Biomarkers for Autistic Preschoolers

12 pagesPublished: June 20, 2022

Abstract

Preschool children, when diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), often ex- perience a long and painful journey on their way to self-advocacy. Access to standard of care is poor, with long waiting times and the feeling of stigmatization in many social set- tings. Early interventions in ASD have been found to deliver promising results, but have a high cost for all stakeholders. Some recent studies have suggested that digital biomarkers (e.g., eye gaze), tracked using affordable wearable devices such as smartphones or tablets, could play a role in identifying children with special needs. In this paper, we discuss the possibility of supporting neurodiverse children with technologies based on digital biomark- ers which can help to a) monitor the performance of children diagnosed with ASD and b) predict those who would benefit most from early interventions. We describe an ongoing feasibility study that uses the “DREAM dataset”, stemming from a clinical study with 61 pre-school children diagnosed with ASD, to identify digital biomarkers informative for the child’s progression on tasks such as imitation of gestures. We describe our vision of a tool that will use these prediction models and that ASD pre-schoolers could use to train certain social skills at home. Our discussion includes the settings in which this usage could be embedded.

Keyphrases: autism spectrum disorder, digital biomarkers, machine learning, personalized medicine

In: Knut Hinkelmann and Aurona Gerber (editors). Proceedings of the Society 5.0 Conference 2022 - Integrating Digital World and Real World to Resolve Challenges in Business and Society, vol 84, pages 219-230.

BibTeX entry
@inproceedings{Society5.0-2022:Practice_Track_Learning_Tracker,
  author    = {Gurmit Sandhu and Anne Kilburg and Andreas Martin and Charuta Pande and Hans Friedrich Witschel and Emanuele Laurenzi and Erik Billing},
  title     = {Practice Track: A Learning Tracker using Digital Biomarkers for Autistic Preschoolers},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Society 5.0 Conference 2022 - Integrating Digital World and Real World to Resolve Challenges in Business and Society},
  editor    = {Knut Hinkelmann and Aurona Gerber},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {84},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/MrvD},
  doi       = {10.29007/m2jx},
  pages     = {219-230},
  year      = {2022}}
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