Social and motor coordination: methods development and applications in ESSENCE

Abstract

This thesis aimed to develop and apply methods for evaluating social and motor coordination, domains that often are challenged in individuals with neurodevelopmental/neuropsychiatric disorders (NDDs), also referred within Early Symptomatic Syndromes Eliciting Neurodevelopmental Clinical Examinations (ESSENCE). In Study I, we created a new tablet-based motor test that could accurately probe motor coordination in children with pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome (PANS) and was comparably more informative than a traditional test of motor control. In Study II, we applied our test to preschool/school children, revealing associations between NDD symptom load and difficulties in motor regulation, especially in inhibitory control and flexibility. In Study III, we developed a dual-camera system using deep learning to investigate gaze during face-to-face interaction that proved to successfully classify gaze towards key facial features. In Study IV, we applied our dual-camera system to examine eye contact and gaze behaviour during a task of describing and guessing words, revealing not only an association between reduced eye gaze and autistic traits, but also an impact of the communicative role on the amount of gaze during the interaction. In summary, we introduced two new methods for understanding of social and motor coordination in individuals with NDDs/ESSENCE. The studies in this thesis together present novel methods that can be applied to capture more detailed information about social and motor coordination.