Para educator Marilyn Bailey, back, helps Chandlar Adolph move through various yoga poses during an outing of the Free State Summer Autism Program at Dance Hues dance studio on Wednesday, July 14, 2010. A Kansas University professor has contributed to research that could lead to technology that could screen for autism-related disorders.

A Kansas University professor has contributed to research that could lead to technology that could screen for autism-related disorders.

The research showed that preverbal vocalizations of very young children with autism differ from those of typically developing children.

The technology involves a small recording device — called a Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system — that sorts child vocalizations from other sounds, said Steve Warren, professor of applied behavioral science and vice provost for research and graduate studies at KU.

He is one of the authors of a study published in the July 19-23 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“I think it’s obviously an exciting development, because it’s a very different way of looking for developmental disability,” Warren said.

Warren called the new research a “proof of concept” study that will require more in-depth testing to determine how useful the technology will be in diagnosing or screening for autism.

In the coming years, Warren said he anticipated that many more studies would be done using the LENA technology, opening the door for research into clinical applications, research and screenings.

“It’ll be five or 10 years at least before we really know if this is a game-changer for autism,” he said.

The idea that children with autism display different vocalizations than normally developing children isn’t new, Warren said. Some parents of children with autism have pointed out that their children were displaying different vocal characteristics, Warren said, and studies have been conducted on the issue before.

But what held back the science was the lack of measuring technology. In the past, researchers would need to painstakingly transcribe hours of tape-recorded conversations.

Using the LENA technology, the authors of the study were able to examine 3.1 million different child utterances from 1,486 all-day recordings of 232 children. Parents willing to participate in the study placed the device on the child’s clothing, and conducted the recordings themselves.

Many children who develop autism don’t show these kinds of developmental speech patterns, Warren said, so he said he guessed that any potential screening would be able to identify autism in some children, but not in others.