Anjana Bhat

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Verified

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• MS, PT, PhD
• Professor at University of Delaware

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display a variety of core and co‐occurring difficulties in social, communication, everyday functioning, cognitive, motor, and language domains. Receiving a combination of services to accommodate needs of autistic individuals is essential for improving their future outcomes. During the COVID‐19 pandemic,...

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is among the most prevalent neurodevelopmental disorders, yet the current diagnostic procedures rely on behavioral analyses and interviews, without objective screening methods to support the diagnostic process. This study seeks to address this gap by integrating upper limb kinematics and deep learning methods to ident...

Introduction: The National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) provides data for key measures of child health and well-being. The aim of this study is to characterize the cardiovascular health (CVH) status of youth with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDD) compared to those without neurodevelopmental disabilities (non-NDD). Hypothesis: Youth with N...

Purpose: Post-pandemic, use of digital technologies (e.g., mobile app, Zoom, virtual reality, and videogaming) to promote physical activity (PA) in populations with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) has increased. The efficacy of various digital technologies in promoting PA in individuals with IDD varies. We conducted a systematic...

Background Individuals (i.e. children/young adults) with developmental disabilities (DDs) and intellectual disabilities (IDs) often display a variety of physical and motor impairments. It is well known that participation in motor activities can positively impact the development of children's cognitive and social skills. Recently, virtual and digita...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by significant challenges in social interaction and comprehending communication signals. Recently, therapeutic interventions for ASD have increasingly utilized Deep learning powered-computer vision techniques to monitor individual progress over time. These models are trained on private, non-public dat...

Purpose Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have motor, social communication, and behavioral challenges. During the pandemic, children lost access to face-to-face (F2F) services and had to revert to telehealth (TH) options. We compared the efficacy, fidelity, acceptability, and feasibility of a general motor (GM) intervention using an F2F...

Motor delays in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are being increasingly recognized using a brief screening tool, called the Developmental Coordination Disorder‐Questionnaire (DCD‐Q). Further validation of these motor delays using a more robust normed, developmental measure is clearly warranted. In this analysis, a nationally representat...

Approximately 85% of children with autism spectrum disorder from the SPARK study receiving standard interventions such as speech-language and occupational therapies. In contrast, only 32%–13% of children with autism spectrum disorder received movement therapies such as physical and recreational therapies, respectively. Little is known about how ser...

Introduction This analysis examined changes in services received and service recovery one-year post-pandemic compared to pre-pandemic levels in children with ASD aged between 19 months and 17 years in various subgroups based on factors such as age, income, race/ethnicity, geographic location, and sex. Methods An online, parent report survey was co...

Aims: We compared the efficacy, fidelity, acceptability, and feasibility of a creative movement (CM) intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), delivered face-to-face (F2F) or through telehealth (TH). Methods: Fifteen children with ASD received the CM intervention F2F or through TH. Motor assessments were used to evaluate effect...

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is among the most prevalent neurodevelopmental disorders, yet the current diagnostic procedures rely on behavioral analyses and interviews and lack objective screening methods. This study seeks to address this gap by integrating upper limb kinematics and deep learning methods to identify potential biomarkers that coul...

Social visual behavior, as a type of non-verbal communication, plays a central role in studying social cognitive processes in interactive and complex settings of autism therapy interventions. However, for social visual behavior analytics in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), it is challenging to manually collect and evaluate gaze data du...

Importance: The efficacy of telehealth (TH) interventions needs to be studied. Objective: To compare the efficacy, fidelity, acceptability, and feasibility of face-to-face (F2F) versus TH seated play (SP) interventions among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Design: As part of a larger randomized controlled trial, children were assigned...

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties in gestural communication during social interactions. However, the neural mechanisms involved in naturalistic gestural communication remain poorly understood. In this study, cortical activation patterns associated with gestural communication were examined in thirty-two children with and...

Motor features of autism have long been acknowledged by clinicians, researchers, and community stakeholders. Current DSM‐5 and ICD‐11 guidelines allow clinicians to assign a co‐occurring diagnosis of developmental [motor] coordination disorder (DCD) for autistic individuals with significant motor problems. DCD is characterized by poor motor profici...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder characterized by significant social communication impairments and difficulties perceiving and presenting communication cues. Machine learning techniques have been broadly adopted to facilitate autism studies and assessments. However, computational models are primarily concentrated on specif...

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties with tool use and pantomime actions. The current study utilized functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine the neural mechanisms underlying these gestural difficulties. Thirty-one children with and without ASD (age (mean ± SE) = 11.0 ± 0.6) completed a naturalistic peg-ham...

A series of recent reports have shed light on the pervasive nature of motor impairments in children with ASD (Bhat, 2020, 2021, Bhat et al., 2022), underscoring the importance of providing ASD clinicians efficient and accurate tools for motor screening. The Developmental Coordination Disorder-Questionnaire (DCD-Q) is a widely used motor screening t...

Social visual behavior, as a type of non-verbal communication, plays a central role in studying social cognitive processes in interactive and complex settings of autism therapy interventions. However, for social visual behavior analytics in children with autism, it is challenging to collect gaze data manually and evaluate them because it costs a lo...

Background Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate impaired verbal and nonverbal communication, deficits in emotional regulation, higher rates of repetitive behaviors, and poor motor planning and body coordination. Our past studies have demonstrated that engaging in rhythmic movement interventions can advance gross motor skills whi...

When motor difficulties continue into adolescence/adulthood, they could negatively impact an individual with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)'s daily living skills, physical fitness, as well as physical and mental health/well-being. Few studies have examined motor difficulties in children with ASD as a function of sex or age; however, greater cogniti...

Movement synchrony refers to the dynamic temporal connection between the motions of interacting people. The applications of movement synchrony are wide and broad. For example, as a measure of coordination between teammates, synchrony scores are often reported in sports. The autism community also identifies movement synchrony as a key indicator of c...

Movement synchrony reflects the coordination of body movements between interacting dyads. The estimation of movement synchrony has been automated by powerful deep learning models such as transformer networks. However, instead of designing a specialized network for movement synchrony estimation, previous transformer-based works broadly adopted archi...

Background Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate impairments in postural strength and control, both of which are important for activities of daily living. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, more focus has been placed on telehealth interventions. Objective Our randomized controlled trial assessed the effects of a general mo...

Background Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit poor imitation, movement planning, and praxis skills that in turn compound their core social communication and behavioral difficulties. Objective Our randomized controlled trial compares the effects of 2 whole-body movement interventions (creative movement [“Play”] and general exercis...

Background Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate significant motor impairments in visuomotor and body coordination, agility, and strength. Around 87% of children with ASD are at risk for motor impairments. However, only about 31% of these children receive rehabilitation services to address their motor needs. Objective Our random...

Background The motor trajectories of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often compromised, leading to difficulties in gross motor performance and locomotor skills by late childhood. Our past work has suggested that whole-body movement interventions using rhythmic contexts can facilitate gross motor skills in children with ASD. Object...

Background Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the most common pediatric neurodevelopmental disorder with a prevalence of 1 in every 44 children. Children with ASD exhibit social communication and behavioral impairments including poor verbal and nonverbal communication and heightened frequencies of repetitive and maladaptive behaviors (RBs). Objecti...

Background Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder limiting a child’s motor performance to a level half their chronological age. Due to COVID-19, there has been growing research on the use of telehealth-based interventions in the care of children with ASD. Objective Based on previous research from our lab, this study assess...

The American Physical Therapy Association Academy of Pediatric Physical Therapy (APTA Pediatrics) Research Agenda was updated in spring 2021. This article describes the process used to revise the agenda. A task force of the APTA Pediatrics Research Committee methodically reviewed and revised the 2018-2020 agenda document to reflect the current rese...

BACKGROUND Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the most common pediatric neurodevelopmental disorder with a prevalence of 1 in every 44 children. Children with ASD exhibit social communication and behavioral impairments including poor verbal and nonverbal communication and heightened frequencies of repetitive and maladaptive behaviors (RBs). OBJECTI...

BACKGROUND The motor trajectories of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often compromised, leading to difficulties in gross motor performance and locomotor skills by late childhood. Our past work has suggested that whole-body movement interventions using rhythmic contexts can facilitate gross motor skills in children with ASD. OBJECT...

BACKGROUND Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate impairments in postural strength and control, both of which are important for activities of daily living. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, more focus has been placed on telehealth interventions. OBJECTIVE Our randomized controlled trial assessed the effects of a general mo...

BACKGROUND Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate significant motor impairments in visuomotor and body coordination, agility, and strength. Around 87% of children with ASD are at risk for motor impairments. However, only about 31% of these children receive rehabilitation services to address their motor needs. OBJECTIVE Our random...

BACKGROUND Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit poor imitation, movement planning, and praxis skills that in turn compound their core social communication and behavioral difficulties. OBJECTIVE Our randomized controlled trial compares the effects of 2 whole-body movement interventions (creative movement [“Play”] and general exercis...

BACKGROUND Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder limiting a child’s motor performance to a level half their chronological age. Due to COVID-19, there has been growing research on the use of telehealth-based interventions in the care of children with ASD. OBJECTIVE Based on previous research from our lab, this study assess...

Children with an Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) have social communication and perceptuomotor difficulties that affect their ability to engage in dyadic play. In this study, we compared spatio-temporal errors and fNIRS-related cortical activation between children with and without an ASC during a Lincoln Log dyadic game requiring them to play leader...

Motor impairments are pervasive and persistent in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) throughout childhood and adolescence. Based on recent studies examining motor impairments in children with ASD between 5 and 15 years (i.e., SPARK study sample), 87–88% of this population is at‐risk for a motor impairment, these problems persisted until 1...

Purpose: After the COVID-19 pandemic, several randomized controlled trials came to a halt; however, we chose to reinvent our study and shifted to a home-based, telehealth intervention delivery format to support children with autism spectrum disorder and their families. Children with autism spectrum disorder have social communication impairments as...

Individuals with developmental disabilities present with perceptuo-motor, social communication, and cognitive impairments that often relate to underlying atypical brain structure and functioning. Physical activity/movement interventions improve behavioral performance of individuals with and without developmental disabilities. Majority of the eviden...

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting multiple developmental domains including social communication, behavioral-affective, sensorimotor, and cognitive systems. There is growing evidence for the use of holistic, whole-body, Creative Movement Therapies (CMT) such as music, dance, yoga, theater, and martial arts in...

Background Yoga is gaining popularity as a multisystem intervention due to its impact on both the physical and mental well-being of children with typical development. However, there is limited empirical evidence to support the use of this approach in school-aged children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The current pilot study evaluated the imp...

Children with ASD receive a multitude of educational, medical, and therapeutic services. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, all of these services came to a complete halt following strict lockdowns. Many services have resumed in a hybrid format using face to face and virtual modes of delivery. This study describes findings from the COVID-19 impa...

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have social communication and perceptuomotor difficulties that affect their ability to engage in various types of joint actions. In this study, we compared spatio-temporal action errors and fNIRS-related cortical activation between children with and without ASD during a Lincoln log joint action game requ...

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the delivery of face-to-face (F2F) therapeutic interventions and neuroimaging assessments for children with autism spectrum disorder has been disrupted. To resume interventions and assessments, many services are now using telehealth-based online platforms. Using the Zoom conferencing platform, our re...

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulties with socially embedded movements such as imitation and interpersonal synchrony (IPS); however, related movement characteristics and underlying neural mechanisms are not well understood. This study compared the movement characteristics and cortical activation patterns of children with an...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that influences the communication and social behavior of a person in a way that those in the spectrum have difficulty in perceiving other people's facial expressions, as well as presenting and communicating emotions and affect via their own faces and bodies. Some efforts have been made to p...

During the last 40 years, neuroscience has become one of the most central and most productive approaches to investigating autism. In this commentary, we assemble a group of established investigators and trainees to review key advances and anticipated developments in neuroscience research across five modalities most commonly employed in autism resea...

The study aimed to collect data from families of children and youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the state of Delaware, USA to understand their ongoing needs and challenges in accessing child healthcare and family support services. We analyzed responses from 263 caregivers of children and youth with ASD from 3 to 24 years using a statewid...

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulties with socially embedded movements such as imitation and interpersonal synchrony (IPS); however, related movement characteristics and underlying neural mechanisms are not well understood. Aim: This study compared the movement characteristics and cortical activation patterns of children wi...

Eighty‐seven percent of a large sample of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at risk for motor impairment (Bhat, Physical Therapy, 2020, 100, 633–644). In spite of the high prevalence for motor impairment in children with ASD, it is not considered among the diagnostic criteria or specifiers within DSM‐V. In this article, we analyzed t...

Engaging in socially embedded actions such as imitation and interpersonal synchrony facilitates relationships with peers and caregivers. Imitation and interpersonal synchrony impairments of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) might contribute to their difficulties in connecting and learning from others. Previous fMRI studies investigated c...

During an object sharing paradigm, we compared infant-caregiver interactions between two groups: i) infants at high-risk (HR) for being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and ii) low-risk (LR) infants, observed at 9, 12, and 15 months of age. 16 HR infants (14 infants with an older sibling diagnosed with ASD and 2 preterm infants that re...

Background: Motor impairments are pervasive in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) however, children with ASD rarely receive a dual diagnosis of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). The Simons Foundation SPARK study engaged families affected by ASD through an online study. Objectives: The DCD parent questionnaire (DCDQ) was used to assess the p...

Interpersonal synchrony (IPS) is an important everyday behavior influencing social cognitive development; however, few studies have investigated the developmental differences and underlying neural mechanisms of IPS. functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a novel neuroimaging tool that allows the study of cortical activation in the presenc...

Background: There is growing evidence for motor impairments in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including poor gross and fine motor performance, poor balance, and incoordination. However, there is limited evidence on the effects of motor interventions for this population. Objective: In the present study, the effects of a physical th...

Our study compared means‐end exploration in infants at risk (AR) for autism and typically developing (TD) infants using a nested box paradigm. Sixteen AR and 16 TD infants were observed at 9, 12, and 15 months with follow‐up at 18 and 24 months. We collected video data on three tasks involving retrieval of a small toy by opening (a) an opaque box,...

Literature on effects of equine therapy in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has grown in recent times. Equine therapy is an alternative multimodal intervention that involves utilizing a horse to remediate core impairments in ASD. Recent systematic reviews in this area have several limitations including inclusion of populations other...

Children with autism spectrum disorder present with a variety of social communication deficits such as atypicalities in social gaze and verbal and non-verbal communication delays as well as perceptuo-motor deficits like motor incoordination and dyspraxia. In this study, we had the unique opportunity to study praxis performance in deaf children with...

Background and aims Praxis, the ability to plan and execute a series of gestures or motor sequences, is impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. In this paper, we present the first study of praxis during a gesture imitation task in a unique population of children with autism spectrum disorder: deaf children who have been exposed to Am...

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have basic motor impairments in balance, gait, and coordination as well as autism-specific impairments in praxis/motor planning and interpersonal synchrony. Majority of the current literature focuses on isolated motor behaviors or domains. Additionally, the relationship between cognition, symptom severit...

The current study investigated the prevalence and pattern of unusual sensory behaviors (USBs) in teens with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and infants (3–36 months) at risk for ASD. From two different sites (UCSD and UConn), caregivers of infants at high (n = 32) and low risk (n = 33) for ASD, and teenagers with (n = 12) and without ASD (n = 11), c...

Introduction: Humans engage in Interpersonal Synchrony (IPS) as they synchronize their own actions with that of a social partner over time. When humans engage in imitation/IPS behaviors, multiple regions in the frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices are activated including the putative Mirror Neuron Systems (Iacoboni, 2005; Buxbaum et al., 2014)....

The current manuscript is the second in a mini-series of manuscripts reporting the effects of alternative, movement-based, rhythm and robotic interventions on the social communication skills of 36 school-age children with ASD. This pilot randomized controlled trial compared the effects of 8-weeks of rhythm and robotic interventions to those of a st...

Object sharing abilities of infants at risk for autism (AR infants) and typically developing (TD) infants were compared from 9 to 15 months of age. Specifically, we examined the effects of infants’ locomotor abilities on their object sharing skills. 16 TD infants and 16 AR infants were observed during an “object sharing” paradigm at crawling and wa...

We compared the effects of 8-weeks of rhythm and robotic interventions with those of a comparison, standard-of-care intervention, on the spontaneous and responsive social attention patterns of school-age children with autism spectrum disorder. Attention patterns were examined within a standardized pretest/posttest measure of joint attention (JA) an...

Repetitive behaviors and poor affect regulation are commonly seen in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We compared the effects of two novel interventions - rhythm and robotic therapies, with those of a standard-of-care intervention, on the repetitive behaviors and affective states of 36 children with ASD between 5 and 12 years using a r...

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder usually diagnosed by the end of the second year of life. Early signs of ASD within the first year of life are still unclear. The main purpose of the present study was to compare object exploration skills between infants at-risk for ASD and typically developing (TD) infants to determine...

We assessed the effects of three interventions, rhythm, robotic, and standard-of-care, on the imitation/praxis, interpersonal synchrony, and overall motor performance of 36 children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) between 5 and 12 years of age. Children were matched on age, level of functioning, and services received, prior to random assignment...

Background: Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) have significant motor impairments in dual and multilimb coordination as well as imitation and praxis (Green et al., 2008; Fournier et al., 2010). Motor incoordination in this population not only impacts their performance of daily activities but also affects their social participation skill...

Background: Older infants engage in triadic joint attention to share object play with their caregivers (Bakeman & Adamson, 1984). Infants move in different ways to express their intent to share by turning to look, pointing to, showing objects, giving objects, vocalizing, or approaching the caregivers with objects. Advancements in locomotor skills c...

Background: Infants who later develop Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) show early gross motor delays (Ozonoff et al., 2008; Bhat, Galloway, & Landa, 2009). The majority of the studies have used retrospective data or general developmental assessments such as the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (Landa & Garrett-Mayer, 2005). Our recent publication re...

Recent evidence suggests that childhood obesity is increasing in children who are typically developing as well as children with developmental disabilities such as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). Impairments specific to autism as well as general environmental factors could lead to an imbalance between the intake and expenditure of energy, leading...

1.1 Background: There is anecdotal evidence for the use of robots to facilitate prosocial behaviors such as joint attention and verbalization in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). However, there have been no normative data in typically developing children to evaluate the effects of robot-child interactions on social and communication s...

Background Coordination develops gradually over development with younger children showing more unstable coordination patterns compared to older children and adults. In addition, children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) display significant coordination impairments. In the current study, we examined whether robot–child interactions could improv...

Interactions between a robot and a child (robot-child interactions) provide a unique context to engage children in whole body movements through a reciprocal imitation game. The effects of a novel, 8-session, robot-child interaction protocol on the imitation and praxis skills of 15 typically developing children and one child with autism between 4 an...

Interactions between a robot and a child (robot-child interactions) provide a unique context to engage children in whole body movements through a reciprocal imitation game. The effects of a novel, 8-session, robot-child interaction protocol on the imitation and praxis skills of 15 typically developing children and one child with autism between 4 an...

The rising incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) has led to a surge in the number of children needing autism interventions. This paper is a call to clinicians to diversify autism interventions and to promote the use of embodied music-based approaches to facilitate multisystem development. Approximately 12% of all autism interventions and 45...

Background: Motor delays have been reported in retrospective studies of young infants who later develop Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). Objective: In this study, we prospectively compared the gross motor development of a cohort at risk for ASDs; infant siblings of children with ASDs (AU sibs) to low risk typically developing (LR) infants. Met...

OBJECTIVE.Poor postural control during pull-to-sit is a predictor of developmental disruption in cerebral palsy and preterm populations but has not been examined in infants at risk for autism. We examined the association between head lag during pull-to-sit at age 6 mo and autism risk status. METHOD.High-risk participants were siblings of children w...