Abstract
An early detection of the autism spectrum disorder is an element in favor of a better management of the autistic child and allows to expect better results in terms of independence and acquisition of social skills. It is therefore crucial to identify autism as early as possible. Usually, traditional techniques like questionnaires are used for autism screening. These methods relies mainly on the expertise and empirical knowledge of psychiatrists and are known to exaggerate results, leading to a high false positive rate. In this paper we address this problem by proposing a novel screening method for autism based on combining machine learning and questionnaire hybridization techniques in order to improve the screening accuracy. After testing several machine learning models including SVM and random forest trees on a locally collected dataset, an accuracy of 97.5% has been achieved. These results are promising and incite to deepen and concretize this study as well as its generalization on other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Lord, C., Risi, S., DiLavore, P.S., Shulman, C., Thurm, A., Pickles, A.: Autism from 2 to 9 years of age. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 63(6), 694–701 (2006)
American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5. Autor, Washington, DC, 5th edn. (2013)
The ICD-10 classification of mental and behavioural disorders: diagnostic criteria for research. World Health Organization (2003)
Maenner, M.J., Shaw, K.A., Baio, J., et al.: Prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among children aged 8 years-autism and developmental disabilities monitoring network, 11 sites, united states, 2016. MMWR Surveill. Summ. 69(4), 1 (2020)
Berument, S.K., Rutter, M., Lord, C., Pickles, A., Bailey, A.: Autism screening questionnaire: diagnostic validity. Br. J. Psychiatry 175(5), 444–451 (1999)
Carbone, P.S., et al.: Primary care autism screening and later autism diagnosis. Pediatrics 146(2) (2020)
Marlow, M., Servili, C., Tomlinson, M.: A review of screening tools for the identification of autism spectrum disorders and developmental delay in infants and young children: recommendations for use in low-and middle-income countries. Autism Res. 12(2), 176–199 (2019)
Robins, D.L., Casagrande, K., Barton, M., Chen, C.M.A., Dumont-Mathieu, T., Fein, D.: Validation of the modified checklist for autism in toddlers, revised with follow-up (m-chat-r/f). Pediatrics 133(1), 37–45 (2014)
Magiati, I., Goh, D.A., Lim, S.J., Gan, D.Z.Q., Leong, J., Allison, C., Baron-Cohen, S., Rifkin-Graboi, A., Broekman, B.P., Saw, S.M., et al.: The psychometric properties of the quantitative-checklist for autism in toddlers (q-chat) as a measure of autistic traits in a community sample of singaporean infants and toddlers. Molecular Autism 6(1), 1–14 (2015)
Bone, D., Bishop, S.L., Black, M.P., Goodwin, M.S., Lord, C., Narayanan, S.S.: Use of machine learning to improve autism screening and diagnostic instruments: effectiveness, efficiency, and multi-instrument fusion. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 57(8), 927–937 (2016)
Wall, D.P., Kosmicki, J., Deluca, T., Harstad, E., Fusaro, V.A.: Use of machine learning to shorten observation-based screening and diagnosis of autism. Transl. Psychiatry 2(4), e100–e100 (2012)
Büyükoflaz, F.N., Öztürk, A.: Early autism diagnosis of children with machine learning algorithms. In: 2018 26th Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (SIU), pp. 1–4. IEEE (2018)
Shahamiri, S.R., Thabtah, F.: Autism ai: a new autism screening system based on artificial intelligence. Cogn. Comput. 12(4), 766–777 (2020)
Allison, C., Auyeung, B., Baron-Cohen, S.: Toward brief “red flags’’ for autism screening: the short autism spectrum quotient and the short quantitative checklist in 1,000 cases and 3,000 controls. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolescent Psychiatry 51(2), 202–212 (2012)
Allison, C., Williams, J., Scott, F., Stott, C., Bolton, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Brayne, C.: The childhood asperger syndrome test (cast) test-retest reliability in a high scoring sample. Autism 11(2), 173–185 (2007)
Dereu, M., Warreyn, P., Raymaekers, R., Meirsschaut, M., Pattyn, G., Schietecatte, I., Roeyers, H.: Screening for autism spectrum disorders in flemish day-care centres with the checklist for early signs of developmental disorders. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 40(10), 1247–1258 (2010)
Swinkels, S.H., Dietz, C., van Daalen, E., Kerkhof, I.H., van Engeland, H., Buitelaar, J.K.: Screening for autistic spectrum in children aged 14 to 15 months. i: the development of the early screening of autistic traits questionnaire (esat). J. Autism Developmental Disorders 36(6), 723–732 (2006)
Smith, N.J., Sheldrick, R.C., Perrin, E.C.: An abbreviated screening instrument for autism spectrum disorders. Infant Ment. Health J. 34(2), 149–155 (2013)
Allison, C., Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Charman, T., Richler, J., Pasco, G., Brayne, C.: The q-chat (quantitative checklist for autism in toddlers): a normally distributed quantitative measure of autistic traits at 18–24 months of age: preliminary report. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 38(8), 1414–1425 (2008)
Ghuman, J.K., Leone, S.L., Lecavalier, L., Landa, R.J.: The screen for social interaction (ssi): a screening measure for autism spectrum disorders in preschoolers. Res. Dev. Disabil. 32(6), 2519–2529 (2011)
Perera, H., Jeewandara, K.C., Seneviratne, S., Guruge, C.: Culturally adapted pictorial screening tool for autism spectrum disorder: a new approach. World J. Clin. Pediatrics 6(1), 45 (2017)
Turner-Brown, L.M., Baranek, G.T., Reznick, J.S., Watson, L.R., Crais, E.R.: The first year inventory: a longitudinal follow-up of 12-month-old to 3-year-old children. Autism 17(5), 527–540 (2013)
Joshi, A., Kale, S., Chandel, S., Pal, D.K.: Likert scale: explored and explained. British J. Appl. Sci. Technol. 7(4), 396 (2015)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hadri, S.A., Bouramoul, A. (2023). Towards a Novel Machine Learning and Hybrid Questionnaire Based Approach for Early Autism Detection. In: Troiano, L., Vaccaro, A., Kesswani, N., Díaz Rodriguez, I., Brigui, I., Pastor-Escuredo, D. (eds) Key Digital Trends in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. ICDLAIR 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 670. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30396-8_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30396-8_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-30395-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-30396-8
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)