Early Screening of Autism in Toddlers via Express-Needs-With-Pointing Protocol

The incidence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), a neurodevelopmental condition associated with challenges in social communication, has witnessed a remarkable surge in recent years, with adverse effects on individuals, families, and society at large. Early screening for autism ensures timely access to interventions, yet screening lacks systematic and methodical approaches for objectively quantifying social behaviors. In response to this, we propose a protocol for early assistive screening, termed the Express-Needs-with-Pointing (ENP), which employs a multi-sensor platform to quantify the one of the social skills of toddler. A vision-based pointing behavior detection method is proposed, combining gaze estimation and pointing estimation, where the pointing estimation integrates forearm orientation and finger direction. We conduct an experiment involving twenty toddlers aged between 16 and 32 months, 4 of whom are typically developing (TD) children, 6 diagnosed with ASD, 8 diagnosed with global developmental delay (GDD), and 5 diagnosed with language disorders (LD). The results demonstrate that the automated assessment methods for pointing behavior achieved an impressive accuracy rate of 93.9%. These findings provide compelling evidence that the ENP is one of the highly effective protocols and holds significant implications for assisting in early autism screening.