Searching for a minimal set of behaviors for autism detection through feature selection-based machine learning.

Transl Psychiatry
Authors
Keywords
Abstract

Although the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has risen sharply in the last few years reaching 1 in 68, the average age of diagnosis in the United States remains close to 4--well past the developmental window when early intervention has the largest gains. This emphasizes the importance of developing accurate methods to detect risk faster than the current standards of care. In the present study, we used machine learning to evaluate one of the best and most widely used instruments for clinical assessment of ASD, the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) to test whether only a subset of behaviors can differentiate between children on and off the autism spectrum. ADOS relies on behavioral observation in a clinical setting and consists of four modules, with module 2 reserved for individuals with some vocabulary and module 3 for higher levels of cognitive functioning. We ran eight machine learning algorithms using stepwise backward feature selection on score sheets from modules 2 and 3 from 4540 individuals. We found that 9 of the 28 behaviors captured by items from module 2, and 12 of the 28 behaviors captured by module 3 are sufficient to detect ASD risk with 98.27% and 97.66% accuracy, respectively. A greater than 55% reduction in the number of behaviorals with negligible loss of accuracy across both modules suggests a role for computational and statistical methods to streamline ASD risk detection and screening. These results may help enable development of mobile and parent-directed methods for preliminary risk evaluation and/or clinical triage that reach a larger percentage of the population and help to lower the average age of detection and diagnosis.

Year of Publication
2015
Journal
Transl Psychiatry
Volume
5
Pages
e514
Date Published
2015 Feb 24
ISSN
2158-3188
URL
DOI
10.1038/tp.2015.7
PubMed ID
25710120
PubMed Central ID
PMC4445756
Links
Grant list
R01 MH090611 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States
1R01MH090611-01A1 / MH / NIMH NIH HHS / United States