Summit on Autism

September 21, 2011
by Floyd

Getting Involved What are OS/OT?

On Saturday, I went to an amazing event at UC Irvine’s Bren Events Center for KiDA’s (Kids Institute for Development and Advancement) third annual Summit on Autism where First Lady Rosalyn Carter was the keynote speaker. I learned about the newest technologies that parents and therapists can use to support their child’s learning, such as iPAD apps for kids. I also got to learn about the newest research on the vast amount of treatments and the resources that families can utilize. This was a great learning opportunity for me because I got to understand more about Autism, its impact on the family, and the positive effects of family involvement.

First Lady Rosalyn Carter, a national advocate for mental health and caregivers, founded the Carter Center’s Mental Health Task Force — a board of experts and consumers that advocate for positive change in the mental health field. She spoke about her past experiences as an advocate for mental health and how it is in our reach in ending the mental health crisis.

One very cool study that I got to learn about was about a couple that set up digital cameras in every room of their home and recorded 24 hours a day of their child’s development from birth to the age of 3. By using different movement and voice recognition systems, they were able to map out what words or babble their child said and where and what time it happened. This way, they were able to figure out what environment stimulated the most words and what the child was doing to develop his or her language. Obviously, this is still taking them some time to gather all the information because it is over 26,000 hours of film that they have to go through. Best of luck to them!

Here’s a pic of me tabling and telling everyone about the great opportunities there is at USC’s Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy!

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