Eggertsville/Snyder Courier/ Friday, February 27, 2015
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Unique emotion recognition treatment leads to improvement in children with high-functioning autism Researchers at the Institute for Autism Research at Canisius College have found a unique emotion recognition treatment highly effective for highfunctioning children with autism spectrum disorder, or HFASD. Children in the treatment group demonstrated significantly improved emotion-recognition skills and were rated as significantly better at facial-emotion recognition and expression. The children also had significantly lower parent ratings of autism symptoms, including social impairments following treatment. Impairment in socialcommunicative functioning is a defining feature of HFASD and it is exacerbated by significant problems in reading emotions in the facial and vocal expressions of others. To date, attempts to improve the emotion recognition skills of children with HFASD and thus their social functioning and symptoms have been largely unsuccessful. This has led some researchers to use computer-based treatment as a way to increase the emotion recognition skills of these children. These efforts however have resulted in narrow and limited gains that have not translated to more significant improvements in skills and symptoms.Given the narrow and limited gains
reported by many investigators, researchers at the Institute for Autism Research set out to enhance a commonly used emotion-recognition software, Mind Reading (Jessica Kingsley Publishing, Inc.) for children with HFASD. According to Marcus L. Thomeer, PhD, co-director of the Institute for Autism Research and the study’s lead author, “the Mind Reading software has produced some promising findings however the gains were not leading to broader improvements for children with HFASD. We developed and tested a treatment that included additional elements we thought would greatly improve the effectiveness of the Mind Reading software.” Findings from the clinical trial, just published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, provide strong support for the effectiveness of the enhanced treatment. Christopher Lopata, PsyD, co-director of the Institute for Autism Research and one of the study’s lead authors, noted that prior studies of the Mind Reading software for children with HFASD have relied almost exclusively on having the children learn and practice emotion recognition using the computer program alone. “This approach
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left out an important element, the opportunity for the children to practice emotion recognition and expression skills with another person and receive feedback on the accuracy of their skills.” The research team developed a treatment that included Mind Reading computer instruction, repeated practice opportunities for emotion recognition and expression between the children and clinical staff, and reinforcement for accurately recognizing and expressing emotions in facial expressions. The unique treatment was administered during 24 sessions (two 90-minute sessions per week) over 12 weeks. A total of 43 children, ages 7-12 years with HFASD participated in the clinical trial, with 22 randomly assigned to receive the treatment and 21 to a wait-list control condition. Following the 12 week treatment, children in the treatment group demonstrated significantly better emotion-recognition skills and were rated as significantly better at fa-
cial- emotion recognition and expression by their parents compared to children in the control group. Children in the treatment group also had significantly lower parent ratings of autism symptoms, including social impairments following treatment compared to the control children. This suggested that the treatment had an effect on broader symptoms and impairments that were not directly targeted by the treatment. Follow-up ratings collected 2-3 months following the treatment indicated that the significant gains in emotion recognition and expression and the reduction in autism symptoms were maintained. “These findings represent an important step as they suggest that emotion recognition and expression skills of children with HFASD can be significantly improved and autism symptoms and impairments reduced by providing direct instruction, reallife practice opportunities, and reinforcement for
accuracy,” said Thomeer. “But more importantly the improvements were maintained after the treatment ended; this is promising as children with HFASD often have difficulty maintaining skills after treatment ends.” This is the first randomized trial of the Mind Reading computer program for children with HFASD and results suggest that the software can be especially effective when additional treatment elements including repeated real-life practice opportunities and reinforcement are included. Computerbased treatments such as Mind Reading have been identified as particularly
appealing for this population as children with HFASD reportedly have an affinity toward working on computers. For more information regarding this unique treatment program and/ or the Institute for Autism Research at Canisius College, visit Canisius.edu/ iar.
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Eggertsville/Snyder Courier /Friday, February 27, 2015
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Local sports Buffalo skier making waves
Photo courtesy of Tim Frank Images
University at Buffalo’s Monique Mitchell takes a third in the Ladies GS at the US Collegiate Skiing Association’s Mid-Atlantic Conference Regionals at Bristol Mountain on Saturday, Feb. 21.
Spartans defeat Orchard Park By Melissa Brawdy SPORTS CORRESPONDENT
Although Williamsville North had split the season series with Orchard Park with a 5-2 win and a 2-1 loss, the Spartans knew that a win against the Quakers would require hard work and a well played game. And although both sides gave up goals within the first five minutes, it was North who scored two goals to Orchard Park’s one in that stretch. The 2-1 tally stood, and North will be playing Niagara-
Wheatfield in the Section VI championship finals March 2 at First Niagara Center. North coach Bob Rosen encouraged his team to focus on doing the little things right. In North’s 5-2 win over Orchard Park earlier in the season, some lucky bounces aided the Spartans. “I showed the boys film yesterday, and I said, you know, we always talk about little things, doing little things well,” Rosen said. “And there was a two-minute stretch in our last game (against Orchard Park), we were losing 2-1, and we went up 3-2. But there were
two plays that if Orchard Park scores, it’s a whole different thing.And we preach doing the little things well, how games change on those little things, and they bought in.” Matt Noe scored North’s first goal just 44 seconds into the game. Orchard Park’s Cole Schiffman tied the game less than two minutes later, but North took even less time to take the lead back on Matthew Terrance’s netter. Brendan Cunningham assisted both
See “Hockey” on page 7
Clough’s training leads to success
By Melissa Brawdy SPORTS CORRESPONDENT
Michael Clough continued what has been a successful swim season with an impressive showing at sectionals on Feb. 7. The Williamsville East freshman finished first in Class Aand second overall in the 100yard butterfly. Now Clough is looking forward to the state championships this Friday and Saturday (Feb. 27-28). Clough has been swimming
for six years and now trains with the Buffalo Area Aquatic Club. And he works hard to swim faster and constantly improve. “I train six days a week, two hours a day,” he said. Coming into this year, Clough’s goal was to qualify for states. Going into sectionals in early February, Clough was the No. 1 seed after a preliminary time of 53.56. Clough was able to have a successful sectional meet, finishing with a time of 54.17, which was the best time in Class Aand second only to Starpoint’s Brandon Smith at the meet. He was also able to achieve his goal of qualifying for states, and Clough was happy about that. “My goal for the season was
to make the state cut, and I was able to do that at sectionals,” he said. “I was really happy about that.” In fact, he’s happy with the way he swam all all season. “Absolutely,” Clough replied when asked if he likes the way his season has gone. “The season was a lot of fun, and I’m really happy with how I did.” As he looks ahead to states this weekend, Clough is training hard and working to swim even faster to accomplish the goal he’s set for himself at states to finish in the top 24. “I’ve been training every
See “Swim” on page 7