Xavier Luckett and his little brother, Kayden, participate in a movement study with Anjana Bhat’s student research team. Wan-Chun Su (left), a fourth year Ph.D. student in biomechanics and movement science, and Kamryn Lombardi, a junior occupational therapy major, lead the brothers in exercises to gain a better understanding of autism’s effects on movement. CREDIT Photo by Ashley Barnas

Anjana Bhat, associate professor in the University of Delaware’s Department of Physical Therapy, has been awarded a research project (R01) grant through the National Institutes of Health for the next three years.

Bhat will look at a timelySPARK study dataset of 24,000 school-aged children with Autism . The goal of Bhat’s grant-funded research is to better understand motor problems in autistic children – their prevalence and relationship to other problems in autism .

Bhat hopes to alter theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders definition of autism, which includes social communication and repetitive behavior problems but not motor problems.

“Including motor impairments within the definition of autism would bring it onto the radar of diagnosticians who could screen for motor delays or refer the child for further motor evaluation and treatment,” Bhat says.

Therapies are largely directed at social communication but not motor problems, which are seen in 87% of children in the SPARK sample, which is the largest autism cohort in the U.S. The earliest delays in children with autism are in their motor skills, and those deficiencies increase as time goes on. Bhat says that gap is not being addressed.

“Only 32% of children with autism receive PT [physical therapy], and 13% receive recreational therapies to address their gross-motor problems,” she says. “In contrast, 80% receive speech or OT [occupational therapy] therapies for speech or fine-motor problems. Movement clinicians — like OTs, PTs and adaptive physical educators — have a role to play in improving motor skills of children with autism . Access to these services should be made available to children who need them.”

Bhat’s project will study the associations between motor impairment, autism severity and comorbidities in children with autism. She has found that motor problems are related to other autism -related issues and specifically aims to “determine the risk for motor impairment in children with autism and how that changes with increasing social communication impairment, repetitive behavior severity, comorbidities and levels of impairment using parent report measures.”