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Mining for Patterns of Behaviour in Children with Autism Through Smartphone Technology

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Smart Homes and Health Telematics (ICOST 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 8456))

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Abstract

A requirement to maintain detailed recording of child behaviour is commonplace for families engaged in home-based autism intervention therapy. Periodically, a Behaviour Analyst reviews this data to formulate new behaviour change plans and as such, the quality and accuracy of data is paramount. We present a smartphone application that aims to streamline the traditional paper based approaches, which are prone to non-compliance and erroneous detail. In addition, we have applied association rule mining to the collected behaviour data to extract patterns in terms of behaviour causes and effects with a view to offer intelligent support to the Behaviour Analysts when formulating new interventions. The paper outlines the results of a small evaluation of the smartphone component before introducing the methodology used to mine that data to highlight behaviour rules and patterns. Consequently, based on an initial sample of child behaviours, the methodology is then compared to a Behaviour Analyst’s assessment of corresponding paper based records.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by a research grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK (EP/K014420/1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Research Institute, University of Ulster, Jordanstown, BT37 0QB, UK

    William Burns & Mark Donnelly

  2. PEAT NI, Parents’ Education as Autism Therapists, Belfast, UK

    Nichola Booth

Authors
  1. William Burns
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  2. Mark Donnelly
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  3. Nichola Booth
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to William Burns .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado, USA

    Cathy Bodine

  2. University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

    Sumi Helal

  3. RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Tao Gu

  4. Institut Mines Telecom/CNRS IPAL (UMI 2955), Singapore, Singapore

    Mounir Mokhtari

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Burns, W., Donnelly, M., Booth, N. (2015). Mining for Patterns of Behaviour in Children with Autism Through Smartphone Technology. In: Bodine, C., Helal, S., Gu, T., Mokhtari, M. (eds) Smart Homes and Health Telematics. ICOST 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8456. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14424-5_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14424-5_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-14423-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-14424-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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