Cited by 300Autism Spectrum Disorder ResearchArtificial Intelligence in HealthcareAttention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Use of machine learning for behavioral distinction of autism and ADHD

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Duda, M, Ma, R, Haber, N, Wall, D P·2016·Translational Psychiatry

Abstract

Although autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) continue to rise in prevalence, together affecting >10% of today's pediatric population, the methods of diagnosis remain subjective, cumbersome and time intensive. With gaps upward of a year between initial suspicion and diagnosis, valuable time where treatments and behavioral interventions could be applied is lost as these disorders remain undetected. Methods to quickly and accurately assess risk for these, and other, developmental disorders are necessary to streamline the process of diagnosis and provide families access to much-needed therapies sooner. Using forward feature selection, as well as undersampling and 10-fold cross-validation, we trained and tested six machine learning models on complete 65-item Social Responsiveness Scale score sheets from 2925 individuals with either ASD (n=2775) or ADHD (n=150). We found that five of the 65 behaviors measured by this screening tool were sufficient to distinguish ASD from ADHD with high accuracy (area under the curve=0.965). These results support the hypotheses that (1) machine learning can be used to discern between autism and ADHD with high accuracy and (2) this distinction can be made using a small number of commonly measured behaviors. Our findings show promise for use as an electronically administered, caregiver-directed resource for preliminary risk evaluation and/or pre-clinical screening and triage that could help to speed the diagnosis of these disorders.

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  • Newer machine learning techniques may offer assistance by parsing out non-linear patterns in data that are missed with general linear model-based statistical tests and predictive modeling.

    “Newer machine learning techniques may offer an assistance by parsing out non-linear patterns in data that are missed with general linear model-based statistical tests and predictive modeling (Duda et al., 2016; Uluyagmur-Ozturk et al., 2017; Vaidya et al., 2020).”

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Authors
Duda, M., Ma, R., Haber, N., & Wall, D. P.
Affiliations
Stanford Medicine (US)
Corresponding author
  • Duda, M
  • Wall, D P
Venue
Translational Psychiatry
Published
2016-02-09
Volume
6
Issue
2
Pages
e732-e732
ISSN
2158-3188 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2263602591
Cited by
300
References
18
Citations by year
2026: 35 · 2025: 43 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 42 · 2022: 40 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 26 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 10
FWCI
8.91
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Translational Psychiatry (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • Simons Foundation (240253)
  • Hartwell Foundation
  • Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative
  • National Institutes of Health
  • National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH090611)
  • Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R21HD091500)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › Health Information Management › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Keywords
autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, differential diagnosis, behavioral screening, Social Responsiveness Scale, machine learning classification, developmental disorders, diagnostic triage
MeSH terms
Machine Learning, Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity, Autistic Disorder, Child, Child Behavior, Diagnosis, Differential, Humans

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