Active clinical trials for "Child Development Disorders, Pervasive"

This study is being carried out to learn more about the effects of Therapeutic Horseback Riding (THR) for children and adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This treatment is very popular and horseback riding for children and adults with disabilities has been used as a form of therapy in the United States for over forty years. However, very little research has been done to find out whether or not THR is effective as a therapy for children with an ASD. This study is being done to see if THR will improve the agitation behaviors, coordination, and communication skills of children and adolescents with an ASD. This study is also being done to find out if the horse is necessary for children and adolescents with an ASD to improve.

This project seeks to understand how the gaze behavior of infants and children with or at high risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be manipulated in the contexts of dynamic social and non-social scenes. The study explores not only the methods which may be most effective in aligning and teaching normative patterns of scene exploration, but also seeks to establish what behavioral characteristics may be most predictive of atypical scanning and atypical learning.

This study uses a mixed methods design to understand the effectiveness of using taekwondo as an intervention for children with ASD and its effect on social interaction skills and everyday life. Qualitative research emphasizes that meaning can be explained and interpreted only by those who experience it. A pretest-posttest design will be used to describe what occurs after the introduction of the taekwondo intervention and understand the changes that occur after exposure. Collecting information through the lived experiences and observations from the parents will be collated with the pre and post results of the children participants' social interaction skills. Qualitative data will be collected through pre and post semi-structured interviews with the parents to understand their observations of their child before and after completing the taekwondo program. Interviews will also be conducted with the child to understand their perspectives on physical activity participation. Interview questions will also explore how the effectiveness of the program has impacted the children's engagement in daily activities. Quantitative research will be collected through pre and post results from the Autism Social Skills Profile-2 ([ASSP] assessment that will be completed by the parents. The ASSP-2 provides a comprehensive measure of social functioning for children and adolescents with ASD.

Headsprout is a commercially available computer-based reading program that teaches children fundamental reading skills, including phonics, fluency, and comprehension. The Headsprout reading intervention has been shown to be effective with children with various levels of reading skills, but it has not been rigorously tested in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Headsprout in a pilot sample of 18 children with ASD and reading delays to serve as a foundation for a larger, future randomized clinical trial (RCT). Eighteen participants will be included in the study and randomly assigned to one of two groups; the first group will immediately receive treatment with the Headsprout reading program and the second treatment group will receive treatment after 12 weeks. Treatment sessions will occur for one to two hours, two to four days a week, for twelve weeks. The participants who do not receive treatment immediately will be asked to complete reading assessments periodically throughout their wait time. Participation may occur in clinic or via telehealth.

Socio-communicative impairments are core deficits in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Individuals with ASD have difficulty understanding eye contact, facial expressions, body language, and different tones of voice when communicating with others. They can't interpret the thoughts and feelings of others, or predict social events, and the impaired social skills may lead to rejection of peers and poor participation in school. Social skills training targets the core symptoms of ASD. Empirical support is building for cognitive-behavioral intervention approach, social skills training group for verbally fluent, school-aged children with ASD. Several studies have shown the efficacy of the social story intervention. It is usually provided individually, but we want to use it in the group.

This study will be the pilot/feasibility phase of a future clinical trial. The proposed feasibility and pilot study aims to bridge the barriers to diagnosis by providing easy-to-access assessment for free, through a mobile unit that travels to rural locations and telehealth assessments. The diagnostic evaluation will confirm or rule out a diagnosis of ASD, followed by purposeful ASD psychoeducation for parents whose children are diagnosed. Parents of children who meet criteria for a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or are suspected to have ASD will be randomized into one of three groups (i.e., in-person psychoeducation, telehealth psychoeducation, or "psychoeducation as usual" with paper psychoeducation materials). Parents will complete outcome measures related to their satisfaction, empowerment, and autism spectrum disorder knowledge. Changes in empowerment and ASD knowledge will be measured within and between groups through a multilevel modeling (MLM) framework. The investigators will also track if participants sought and/or received additional ASD-related services throughout, and again at a 6-month follow-up. Results from this study will help to guide a future, fully powered efficacy trial with a larger sample. Added April 2020: In light of the Virginia governor's stay-at-home order in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the investigators are altering the protocol in line with the university's request to move to remote conduct of research where possible as well as to continue to provide services to families in this time, in line with Executive Order 53 from the VA Governor. Parents in the latter half of the study conducted entirely remotely, will be randomized into the two psychoeducation conditions, telehealth or paper materials psychoeducation groups, as in-person visits are not permitted. Statistical analyses will be added to compare results between and within those who received in-person versus telehealth assessments. The investigators and participants may return to in-person assessments if and when it is possible to do so, but reserve the right to continue tele-assessment even once stay-at-home orders are lifted, in order to fully answer the research aim of the feasibility and validity or tele-assessment procedures in ASD.

The aim of this study, therefore, is to determine the effect of problem-solving training on the interpersonal problem-solving skills of mothers with special needs children. This study was a parallel randomized controlled trial. The mothers were sorted into control and experimental groups (40 experimental and 40 control groups). A personal information form and the Interpersonal Problem Solving Inventory (IPSI) were used to collect data in this research. The participants in the experimental group gived to problem solving training program while the control group was not exposed to any intervention.The data in the control and experimental groups were homogeneously distributed. There was no significant difference in the pre-training test scores for any of the dimensions , but the post-training test scores were significantly higher in the experimental group than in the control group. Intragroup analysis with the Wilcoxon sign-rank test showed that there were significant differences between the pre-training and post-training test scores in the experimental group. Interpersonal problem-solving skills can be improved by providing problem-solving training to the mothers of children with special needs. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that psychiatric nurses provide training to protect and improve the well-being of children with special needs and their families.

In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) outbreak, the home confinement of the population ordered by governments in many countries raise questions about its impact on individuals' physical and mental health in the short and longer term. In children, reduced physical activity, changes in lifestyle, disturbances in sleep patterns, lack of in-person contact with peers, poor or inadequate understanding of health risks may be risk factors of anxiety, stress, fatigue, sleep disorders. These problematic effects could be modulated by social factors (housing in urban or rural areas, availability of personal space at home, parenting stress, etc.).

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-behavioral disorder associated with repetitive movements. The role of physical therapist towards an autistic child is most neglected one. Therefore, the objective of this study was to see the effectiveness of different ball exercise on stereotypic behavior of children with ASD. Different ball exercises were implemented for 2 months, 3 sessions per week and every session consist of 35 minutes.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is increasing in prevalence, and is characterized by deficits in social communication and interaction across multiple contexts, and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. The majority of individuals with ASD have poor outcomes in the area of social functioning; however, there are no medical treatments available that target the core social communication deficits. The goal of the proposed research is to understand the neurobiological role of an imbalance in excitatory (glutamate) and inhibitory (gamma-aminobutyric acid, GABA) neurotransmission in the social cognition deficits in ASD, and to develop proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy as a measurement of target engagement to measure the ability of a medication, gabapentin, to increase cortical GABA levels. Spectrally-edited proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) provides an ideal method for measuring cortical GABA levels. All proposed studies will be in 70 adolescents (male and female) with ASD (age 13 to 17 years). Specific Aim 1: To measure correlations of 1H-MRS GABA levels in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and occipital cortex (OC) with clinical measures of social cognition at baseline. Specific Aim 2: To measure the effect of an initial one time dose of gabapentin on 1H-MRS GABA levels in the ACC and OC. The hypotheses are 1) that higher social cognition ability will be positively correlated with GABA in the ACC but not in the OC (a control, non-social cognition-related region) of individuals with ASD, and 2) that gabapentin will increase GABA levels in the ACC and OC of youth with ASD.