{"id":5505,"date":"2015-12-08T07:00:09","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T23:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/improving-lives-of-children-with-autism\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:07:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:07:32","slug":"improving-lives-of-children-with-autism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/improving-lives-of-children-with-autism\/","title":{"rendered":"Dedicated to improving the lives of children with Autism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last ten years, Professor Andrew Whitehouse has become a local and national champion of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) research.<\/p>\n

As the author of Will Mozart Make My Baby Smart?<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> Whitehouses\u2019s research has attracted worldwide media interest from TIME<\/em>, The New York Times<\/em>, CNN and the BBC, and he has won numerous awards and accolades, including WA Business News<\/em> 40 under 40 (2012). Most recently, he was awarded the Professional Achievement Award for Health Sciences at the 2015 Â鶹ֱ²¥ Alumni Awards, which recognises the outstanding accomplishments and excellence of a Curtin graduate in the field of health.<\/p>\n

Whitehouses\u2019s first exposure to autism was through a family friend whose son had the condition. As a Curtin graduate in Speech Pathology, he went on to provide language therapy to adults and children with ASD. But it wasn\u2019t until he travelled to the UK for post-doctorate studies that he began to specialise in ASD research.<\/p>\n

Now Whitehouse is the head of the Developmental Disorders Research Group at the Telethon Kids Institute<\/a>. There, he and his team are investigating the genetic and neurodevelopmental causes of ASD and language impairment.<\/p>\n

\"Professor<\/a>
Professor Andrew Whitehouse with Mr Phil Hockey at the Curtin Alumni Achievement Awards.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt sounds uncomfortably trite, but I feel most proud of developing a highly active research program that has not lost its primary focus of helping families touched by autism,\u201d Whitehouse says.<\/p>\n

ASD disorders are typically diagnosed between the ages of two and five years. In Australia the average of diagnosis is 4.5 years\u00a0\u2013 leaving a lot of room for improvement, according to Whitehouse. Years of anecdotal evidence, and recent research<\/a> from the University of Washington, show that the earlier ASD is detected, the more effective the therapy.<\/p>\n

Currently, it is difficult to positively diagnose ASD earlier than 24 months for several reasons, such as the fact that there is no one clear cause of ASD and that infants are not neurologically developed enough to have recognisable ASD symptoms.<\/p>\n

To this end, Whitehouse has created a \u2018constellation\u2019 of factors to determine if infants at 12 months of age with developmental difficulties are likely to go on to develop ASD. Factors can include having a family history of ASD, as well as behaviors such as lack eye contact and inattention to human speech that indicate a breakdown of innate social behaviors that can lead to ASD.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy trialing new therapies with infants, when the brain is at its most changeable, we hope to have an even more positive impact on their development and long-term outcome,\u201d Whitehouse says. His goal is to reduce the national average of ASD diagnosis from 4.5 years to two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am ridiculously excited about this project,\u201d Whitehouse says. \u201cThere aren\u2019t too many jobs where you get exercise both the nerdy side of your personality, while also satisfying deep-rooted ideals of compassion. My area of science really allows this, and I love it to bits.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Renowned researcher and author Professor Andrew Whitehouse is passionate about enriching the lives of children with Autism and their families.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":5506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-5505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Professor-Andrew-Whitehouse-2.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Curtin","last_name":"University","display_name":"Â鶹ֱ²¥"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 07:04:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5505"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=5505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}