CSAAT (sliit.lk),  “>

AHEAD Project

• Restricted and Repetitive Behavior Analysis – The presence of restrictive and repetitive behaviors (RRBs), interests, and activities is one of the key indicators of Autism. Individuals may engage in stereotyped and repetitive motor movements (e.g., hand flapping, rocking, punching, drumming or lining up items) or speech. They may have an insistence on sameness. RRBs can be problematic when others interfere with the child’s way of behavior leading to anxiety and aggression. This research focuses on identifying the RRBs of the children and finding ways to automate the behavior analysis and prediction. 
• Emotion Analysis – It has been found that there are significant differences in social interaction of children with ASD. Emotion expression and emotion recognition play key roles in social interaction. Children with Autism has shown poor emotion expression as well as recognition of others’ emotions. This research is aimed at developing an automated tool to identify the deficits in both emotion expression and recognition of children with Autism. The automated analysis of smile, imitation of facial expressions, responsiveness would signal an early indication of autistic symptoms.
• Gaze and Attention Analysis -Children with ASD have shown variant behaviors in eye contact, disengagement of visual attention, visual tracking and social interest and affect in comparison to typically developing (TD) children. These social cues that we measure, gaze and attention in particular, can be recorded in greater detail and at an early age which would give more opportunities for diagnosis of ASD and early intervention. Though there has been few research studies in developed countries using gaze patterns for autistic screening, the devices and technologies they have used are not affordable in Sri Lanka. This research area attempts to find affordable techniques for evaluating gaze and attention of children with Autism.
• Gait Analysis – A variety of movement disturbances including atypical gait, upper limb movements and postural control are also important as early signs of autism. Atypical gait is defined as an unusual style of walking from the normal pattern of walking and researchers have tried many different variables to test the abnormal gait patterns of children with ASD. Most studies have either used basic gait measurements, kinematic, kinetic or a combination of these. A limited research has been conducted on the link between infant motor skills and autism and much of the literature tend to provide a qualitative description of gait and motion based on the observation of clinicians. Thus, it is imperative to quantify these descriptions with measuring tools real time, specially starting as early as 6 months of age. Therefore, automated tools for quantitative gait and motion analysis have become vital for assessing pathologies manifested by atypical motor behaviors. This research is to analyze the gesture and gait patterns of children with Autism.
• Child Interaction Analysis – The main analysis on the CSAAT project involves videos of children for early detection of the autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Often, monitoring and quantifying the ability of children to interact with parents and professional therapists is essential in identifying any potential issues in their development growth. In this research, we plan to analyse the interactions between child and mother/examiner. This involves the use of image pre-processing techniques along with deep learning techniques such as graph neural networks to analyse the behaviours of the child as well as his/her interaction with others. The outcomes of this research may be useful in early identification and continuous monitoring of development goals and social interaction expectations of children.
• Culturally Sensitive Autism Assessment Tool (CSAAT) – Accelerating Higher Education Expansion and Development (AHEAD), World Bank funded Sri Lankan government operation grant.
  • For more information, visit CSAAT (sliit.lk),