Diagnose Autism Simply with ‘ipad’ Games

Diagnose Autism Simply with ‘iPad’ Games? BBC and Mail Not Representing Scientific Study Comprehensively

Introduction

A recent scientific study on early identification of autism was published in Nature on 24 August 2016 [1], which scientists employed small tablet computers equipped with touch-sensitive screens and embedded inertial movement sensors to record the movement kinematics and gesture forces made by children with and without autism. Results revealed that motor patterns of autism children consisted of greater Impact forces with different distribution of forces within a gesture, while their gesture kinematics are faster, larger and more distal. The study supported the notion fundamental disruption to motor pattern is the key differentiator of autism and demonstrated that fun, smart device gameplay could be a computational assessment to autism.

The study was published in both BBC on 30 August 2016 [2] and Mail Online on 31 August 2016 [3]. The news story in BBC mainly focused on introducing a cheaper, faster and fun way to help diagnose autism with tablet and phone games. The article highlighted that movement in the gameplay is the key difference for identifying autism and mentioned the complex condition of autism. The news story in Mail Online emphasized on how playing iPad games can spot early autism in children and described the global prevalence of autism among different countries.

This scientific study is significant in the scientific community as the first proof-of-concept for the specificity of the motor signature in the early autism identification and leads to the direction for future studies to realize this methodology as a computational bio-behavioural marker. At the same time, this breakthrough in autism identification with accessible gameplays could serve as an economic and fast way for concerned parents and benefit society as a whole.

Thesis

While this study is beneficial to both scientific community and general society, the scientific report focused on the motor signature rationale behind and future direction for clinical development while the media outlets emphasized on the use of tablet games and its important application to society. The news stories on BBC and Mail were not representing the comprehensive scientific study properly to a certain extent and this essay would evaluate both articles in terms of their lopsided emphasis, public’s perspective, reporting inaccuracy and clear tone.

Exposition

1. Lopsided Emphasis

The emphases of both BBC and Mail news stories are biased on the application and its social impact to attract readers without reflecting its significance to the scientific community. Journalists usually focus on the news value in selecting a piece of scientific report in news reporting [4] which could grab the public attention. In order to simplify the scientific study to a daily life aspect, BBC and Mail used the “tablet and phone games” and “‘breakthrough’ iPad game” as the subject in the headlines. This simplification approach could allow better understanding for public as tablet games are commonly used in daily life.  Nevertheless the overemphasis on the methodology (i.e. games) in the news stories would blur the original gist of the scientific report [5], which is the rationale behind the scientific study. The news reporting in Mail is putting too much emphasis on the specific iPad games that it even states that “it is hoped the app could lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment”. This would probably mislead the readers that it is the app instead of the touch screens and inertial movement sensors on the tablet which helps to collect data for autism identification. The news story in BBC is comparatively more comprehensive by highlighting the movements of the children playing tablet games as the key differential factor and the rationale behind the study instead of merely describing those as ‘games’.

Regarding the significance of the news, Mail only focuses on getting readers’ attention and raising public awareness by including the statistics in different countries to show the global prevalence of autism. While BBC outlines the technology with its accessible and economically-friendly characteristics for the social impact, as well as quoting an autistic expert who suggested the direction of conducting further studies in the future scientific development.

1. Public Perspective

Both news stories are written from the public readers’ perspective by carefully selecting materials to be included to make the science accessible and easier reading. Extra elements are added in the stories apart from the original scientific report to supplement details and context for the study. In Mail, the story highlights added under the title could give a brief overview for the study while feature columns included could give supplementary background information of autism and the study. However, sometimes including irrelevant extra details would mislead the readers also. For example, one of the feature columns included in Mail introduces SwiftKey, an app which helps children with autism communicate, may confuse the readers since the app is unrelated to the current study. In BBC, contrasting comments from other experts are added apart from the researchers’ views for a balanced news report [6]. The views from Dr Judith Brown, head of knowledge and expertise at the National Autistic Society, are included, suggesting that “a single and universal diagnostic test for complex autism condition is extremely unlikely”. Attractive real-life pictures are also added in BBC report to make it more daily-life connected while Mail only includes those experiment-demonstrating diagrams originated from the scientific report in Nature.

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