Special Places in the News:  A Camp For Kids Who Don't Feel Pain

Hippotherapy in the News: Hippotherapy and Children with Autism

Editor's Note:  Yes, this is a small study, but results were quite significant!

The American Journal of Occupational Therapy published a pilot study on 6 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who participated in 45 minute hippotherapy sessions for 12 weeks.  To determine pre and post intervention scores the following were used: the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-II, the Child Activity Card Sort, force plates and a video motion capture system and force plates.

The results indicated the following:

Language Acquisition in the News:  Toddlers Can Learn Verbs Even in Non-Social Contexts  

[Source:  Science Daily]

Language acquisition has traditionally been considered a social, interactive process, however new research from Boston University College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College reveals that toddlers are able to acquire the meanings of words even in "socially impoverished contexts" where social or visual information is absent.

Sudha Arunachalam, Ph.D., director of the BU Child Language Lab and assistant professor in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at Sargent College authored the study which provides new evidence that just overhearing words may be enough for children to learn them.

Hearing Loss Treatment in the News:  Computer Processes Sound, Filters out Background Noise for the Hearing-Impaired 

[Source:  Medical News Today]

Computer engineers and hearing scientists at The Ohio State University have made a potential breakthrough in solving a 50-year-old problem in hearing technology: how to help the hearing-impaired understand speech in the midst of background noise.

In the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, they describe how they used the latest developments in neural networks to boost test subjects' recognition of spoken words from as low as 10 percent to as high as 90 percent.

SIDS in the News:  Brainstem Abnormalities Found in SIDS Infants, in All Sleep Environments 

Investigators at Boston Children's Hospital report that infants dying suddenly and unexpectedly, in both safe and unsafe sleep environments, have underlying brainstem abnormalities and are not all normal prior to death.

The researchers also point to the need to detect and treat this underlying vulnerability early, the focus of their current work. They report their findings in the December issue of Pediatrics.

The investigators, led by Hannah Kinney, MD, a neuropathologist at Boston Children's, have shown over the past two decades that infants who die suddenly, unexpectedly and without explanation - whose deaths are generally attributed to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) - have differences in brainstem chemistry that set them apart from infants dying of other causes.

"Synesthesia" in the News:  People with Autism May Have a Tangling of the Senses 

[Source:  Science Now]

People with autism experience a more extreme version of the world than the rest of us. For more than 90%, sounds are louder, colors are brighter, and touch can be a disturbing intrusion. The reason, according to a new study, may be that many autistic people also have synesthesia, a condition of intertwined perception in which one sense stimulates another.

Most people with synesthesia don't find the condition disturbing; many enjoy it. It certainly makes the world a more interesting place. Synesthetes may see the sound of a symphony as a skein of rippling lines, for example, or a black letter "A" as bright red. People with synesthesia say their experience is not the same as imagination, but they also realize their perceptions are in their own mind and not part of objects in the outside world. "Their experience is somewhere in between, neither imaginary  

Nonverbal Learning Disability in the News:  Differences in Brains of Children With Nonverbal Learning Disability 

[Source: Science Daily]

A Michigan State University researcher has discovered the first anatomical evidence that the brains of children with a nonverbal learning disability - long considered a "pseudo" diagnosis - may develop differently than the brains of other children.

The finding, published in Child Neuropsychology, could ultimately help educators and clinicians better distinguish between - and treat - children with a nonverbal learning disability, or NLVD, and those with Asperger's, or high functioning autism, which is often confused with NLVD.

"Children with nonverbal learning disabilities and Asperger's can look very similar, but they can have very different reasons for why they behave the way they do," said Jodene Fine, assistant professor of school psychology in MSU's College of Education

PediaStaff Resource of the Week:  Interview Like a Pro: The Pediatric Therapy Clinician's Guide (Four Parts) 

Book Review:  Late, Lost and Unprepared  

Book by:  Joyce Cooper-Kahn, PhD and Laurie Dietzel, PhD

Book Review by:  Rachel Jones, CCC-SLP

I am child number 3 out of four children, and both of my brothers, in their own way, struggle with executive functioning. My older brother (we'll call him Matt) is 30, married, working, and a fully functioning adult. When he was growing up, executive functioning wasn't quite yet a "thing", and if it was, my parents in small town Midwest didn't know it existed. That all changed when my younger brother, currently a senior in high school (we'll call him Dan), was diagnosed with ADHD this spring. My parents always said from the time Dan was born, that he and Matt were practically identical. Now, Matt doesn't have a diagnosis, but has identical difficulties to Dan.

I really like this book, on a couple different levels. It's written towards parents so if you're looking for in-depth therapy strategies, steps, and procedures, this isn't what you want. It is what you want if you're  

Therapy Activity of the Week:  A Powerful Lesson in Bullying Using Only an Apple!  

Product Review:  The ABC's of Movement - Movement Flash Cards That Focus on Learning the Alphabet  

My fellow pediatric physical and occupational therapists have been using The ABC's of Movement flash cards for the last 2 months and have really enjoyed using them as a part of our treatment sessions.

We have found that the flashcards work best with our patients that are about 3 years old and older.  I have used the flashcards with younger kiddos as an attractive target to try to grab due to the cards bright colors and pictures.

One of our favorite features about the flashcards is their size, which are visually appealing to our patients and easy for them to hold.