New Study Helps To Detect Autism As Early As 9 Months
Mel Rutherford the associate professor of psychologyin the Faculty of Science is leading an Early Autism Study and has been utilizing the eye tracker technology to measure the eye direction of an infant. They study how well a baby can follow bouncing balls on a computer screen with their face and eyes.
“What’s important about this study is that now we can distinguish between a group of siblings with autism from a group with no autism — at nine months and 12 months,” says Rutherford. “I can do this in 10 minutes, and it is objective, meaning that the only measure is eye direction; it’s not influenced by a clinician’s report or by intuition. Nobody’s been able to distinguish between these groups at so early an age.”
For now the earliest that autism can be spotted is the age of 2 or in some places not until they are 3 or 4. Rutherford and other researchers agree that we can help more children if we are able to catch it early in their life.
“There is an urgent need for a quick, reliable and objective screening tool to aid in diagnosing autism much earlier than is presently possible,” she says. “Developing a tool for the early detection of autism would have profound effects on people with autism, their parents, family members, and future generations of those at risk of developing autism.”