Postural Control During Walking and Standing Among Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Lately, many researchers have found that Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are most likely to have gross motor deficiencies such as lack of coordination in gait and balance. Much has been researched on etiology and motor learning, but only very few researches have examined and analyzed quantitatively gait and balance in ASD. The aim of this research is to analyze quantitatively balance, gait and balance during perturbation in children with ASD and to compare with typically developed children (TD). A group of 20 children diagnosed with ASD and a control group of 20 TD children will be recruited and tested in the laboratory with well-established measures of gait and balance function. They will be instructed to stand as still as possible on a force plate with different task conditions : (1) standing with the eyes open (EO) - standing upright viewing an "X" displayed on a screen 3 meters in front of them; (2) eyes closed (EC) - same as (1) with the eyes closed and covered by blindfolds (i.e. no visual information). (3) Same as 1 standing on foam (i.e., conflicting proprioceptive information). Gait will be measured using the narrow base walk test, modified for clinical use. Participants will be asked to walk within a narrow path 6 meters long . The statistical analysis will include Independent T-tests to compare the ASD and controls with respect to different characteristics. General Linear Model (GLM) will be used by applying a separate model where the dependent variables will be the average values of the postural stability or gait stability parameters (continuous) and the independent variables were categorical by the group and task condition.