{"id":114,"date":"2024-09-27T11:17:27","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T15:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/?page_id=114"},"modified":"2024-11-18T14:23:46","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T19:23:46","slug":"new-answers-for-autistic-children","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/cure\/new-answers-for-autistic-children\/","title":{"rendered":"New Answers for Autistic Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simone Gill<\/a>, an associate professor of occupational therapy, is conducting vital research that explores a possible connection between an autistic child\u2019s motor skills and verbal skills<\/a>. <\/strong>She wants to help answer the difficult questions that parents of very young autistic children ask, like How soon will my child talk? Will my child ever talk?<\/p>\n

\"\"
Occupational therapy researcher Simone Gill<\/strong> is examining the connection between an autistic child\u2019s motor and verbal skills.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gill, who also directs the Motor Development Laboratory<\/strong><\/a> at Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, collaborated with Helen Tager-Flusberg<\/strong><\/a>, professor of psychological and brain sciences and director of BU\u2019s Center for Autism Research Excellence<\/strong><\/a> (CARE), and speech therapists at Massachusetts General Hospital, to closely observe how many steps an autistic child took as they calculated balance, velocity, and other motor skills. In studies conducted at CARE, autistic children were asked to walk on a special mat embedded with sensors to measure the distance of their steps, and they also completed other physical movements that were compared to those of children without autism.<\/p>\n

\u201cHope remains that we can create interventions that will be more impactful for [autistic] children and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014SIMONE GILL<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The preliminary results suggest autistic children\u2019s gross motor skills and the ability to speak may be more closely related than previously thought. Many of the minimally verbal autistic children she has observed display other movement challenges or inconsistencies. Developmental psychologists at Boston Children\u2019s Hospital are conducting brain imaging to further understand these findings, and researchers at UCLA are analyzing two play-based interventions for movement and language deficits.<\/p>\n

\u201cHope remains that we can create interventions that will be more impactful for [autistic] children and their families,\u201d Gill says. \u201cThe hope is maybe they won\u2019t have to go to five different specialists to receive help. Maybe they could just go to a few because we are able to put our resources together and find out how to help them in the most efficient way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simone Gill, an associate professor of occupational therapy, is conducting vital research that explores a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1859,"featured_media":0,"parent":106,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"bu-landing","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1859"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/114\/revisions\/720"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}