Easy assessment of individuals with various severities of autism spectrum disorder, focusing on motor timing control

Abstract

BackgroundObjective evaluation is important to achieve an effective intervention. However, there are limited assessment tools to easily apply to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individuals with various severities in the clinical setting. This study aimed to characterize the timing control ability of ASD individuals and clarify the relationship between timing control ability and ASD severity level in order to establish an assessment tool for ASD function. MethodWe developed a simple touchscreen-based task for evaluate motor timing control ability and used two types of sensorimotor timing controls (i.e., simple timing and delayed timing tasks) in ASD (n = 77) and typically developing (TD) individuals (n = 87). ResultsEach participant with ASD completed the simple timing task. Regarding the delayed timing task, two participants in the ASD group were excluded as they faced difficulties when conducting the task according to the instruction. Accuracy of motor-timing control was significantly lower in participants with ASD than in those with TD for each timing task. The mean timing error in the adaptive timing control were correlated with clinically evaluated ASD severity and participant age in the ASD group. Furthermore, receiver operating characteristic curve analysis indicated that altered motor timing control is useful for distinguishing individuals with and without ASD (area under the curve = .845). ConclusionsWe showed that our assessment tool accurately assessed timing control ability of individuals with ASD, regardless of the varying ranges of symptomatic severities, and served as a useful tool for capturing the overall severity of such a heterogeneous disorder, which may lead to more effective therapies for ASD.