Rehabilitation and Therapy Commons^™

Gait Analysis Of Teenagers And Young Adults Diagnosed With Autism & Severe Verbal Communication Disorders, Michael J. Weiss, Matthew F. Moran, Mary E. Parker, John T. Foley

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Both movement differences and disorders are common within autism spectrum disorders (ASD). These differences have wide and heterogeneous variability among different ages and sub-groups all diagnosed with ASD. Gait was studied in a more homogeneously identified group of nine teenagers and young adults who scored as “severe” in both measures of verbal communication and overall rating of Autism on the Childhood Autism Rating Scales (CARS). The ASD individuals were compared to a group of typically developing university undergraduates of similar ages. All participants walked a distance of 6-meters across a GAITRite (GR) electronic walkway for six trials. The ASD and …

Two-Legged Hopping In Autism Spectrum Disorders, Matthew F. Moran, John T. Foley, Mary E. Parker, Michael J. Weiss

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Sensory processing deficits are common within autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Deficits have a heterogeneous dispersion across the spectrum and multimodal processing tasks are thought to magnify integration difficulties. Two-legged hopping in place in sync with an auditory cue (2.3, 3.0 Hz) was studied in a group of six individuals with expressive language impaired ASD (ELI-ASD) and an age-matched control group. Vertical ground reaction force data were collected and discrete Fourier transforms were utilized to determine dominant hopping cadence. Effective leg stiffness was computed through a mass-spring model representation. The ELI-ASD group were unsuccessful in matching their hopping cadence (2.21 ± …

The Influence Of Concurrent Cognitive Tasks On Postural Sway In Children, Yvette Blanchard, Shannon Carey, Jocelyn Coffey, Alison Cohen, Trisha Harris, Stephanie Michlik, Geraldine Pellecchia

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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of concurrent tasks on postural sway in children.

Methods: Nineteen fourth-grade students, while standing on a balance platform, were asked to stand still, count backward, and read second-grade level sentences. The AMTI Accusway System was used to calculate the length of center of pressure path (LCOP), sway range (SR), and variability (SV) in mediolateral (ML) and anteroposterior (AP) directions of sway.

Results: Analysis of variance revealed a main effect of cognitive task condition for SR-AP, SR-ML, SV-AP, and SV-ML. Post hoc comparisons revealed lower values of those four dependent …