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Clinician-Aligned Reasoning and Explanation Framework for Autism Spectrum Disorder Screening

Objective

"Autism (ASD) affects 1 in 36 children (2.7%) in the US, with a 700% increase in diagnosis since 1998. Early diagnosis is essential, as interventions during early brain development significantly improve outcomes. However, the current gold-standard assessment, the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), is time-consuming, requires expert clinicians, and causes long waits that delay support. Machine learning (ML) can support more scalable and efficient screening, but most existing models rely only on perceptual pattern recognition and act as “black boxes”, generating predictions without explaining how they were reached. This project addresses this limitation by separating perception (ML-based detection of behavioural cues: gestures, attention shifts, interactions) from reasoning (their clinical interpretation within the ADOS framework using clinician-defined rules). This makes the system transparent and clinically meaningful. The main contributions are: (1) the release of a large-scale dataset densely annotated with gestures and ADOS items; (2) a ML architecture that uses specialised ""experts"" in gaze, gesture, and object-use patterns and combine them for gestures and ADOS item prediction; and (3) a clinician-in-the-loop application that displays extracted behaviours and maps them to ADOS scores using symbolic reasoning. The project will be hosted at Inria (France), with clinical collaboration at CHU Nice. I will conduct a secondment at Idiap (Switzerland), where I will train in attention modelling and access a large-scale ASD dataset. If successful, the project will provide clinicians with interpretable decision support tools, improving ASD subtype differentiation and shortening assessment delays that impact children and their families. Moreover, this fellowship gives me a unique opportunity to work with leading experts, collaborate with clinicians, and gain the transferable skills to achieve my goal of building and leading my own research group."

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Topic(s)

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF

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Coordinator

INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE EN INFORMATIQUE ET AUTOMATIQUE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 226 420,56
Address
DOMAINE DE VOLUCEAU ROCQUENCOURT
78153 Le Chesnay Cedex
France

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Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

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Partners (1)

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