New study shines light on autism
African clinicians share notes
Children on the autism spectrum have a new friend to help improve their social skills, and that friend is not one you’d expect: it’s a robot.
A new study led by Yale University’s Brian Scassellati paired autistic children with a robot over a month.
The therapy delivered by the robot was done with 12 children (aged six to 12) in their own homes with a caregiver present, and involved “activities on emotional storytelling, perspective-taking and sequencing” for half an hour every day over a month.
The robot “encouraged engagement, adjusted the difficulty of the day’s activities to the child’s past performance, and modelled positive social skills, like eye contact”, said the researchers.
The results, published in Science Robotics, were remarkable: the children showed “improved interactions with adults – and continued to demonstrate improvement even after the therapy sessions were completed”.
So what does this mean for South Africa?
The study is a kernel of hope for families in the future who would have access to such technology. For many others, there are bigger and more immediate fish to fry – such as getting a diagnosis in the first place, and breaking down barriers that create ostracisation.
Last September, when the International Society for Autism Research held a meeting in SA, it was the first of its kind ever on the continent. About 300 researchers, therapists and family members from over 25 countries, mostly African, met for three days.
Although the meeting in itself was an achievement and allowed for cross-pollination of studies and useful interventions, some worrying facts emerged: that studies which test for autism need to be adapted to an African context; that many kids in Africa on the spectrum do not have access to suitable schools; and that many such children, tragically, are hidden from view.
With South Africa’s major socioeconomic gap, some autism spectrum disorder children are diagnosed early and have all the help they can get. Others are not even diagnosed, making it difficult to pin down the stats.
But, when Africa Check went in search of those elusive numbers, a few clues emerged: University of Cape Town professor Petrus De Vries said “we don’t really know the numbers” because no study has been done to determine the total number of cases here.
“However, the global rates are in the region of 1% to 2% and we have no reason to believe that it would be any less here.”
Vicky Lamb of Autism SA told Africa Check that estimates are around 1 million in SA but that the country lacks enough professionals who can make a diagnosis.
This shortage of professionals means “only some of the South Africans with autism will actually be diagnosed”.