New methods and tools to assess nutritive sucking in new-borns: effect of different feeding bottles on nutritive performance.

Nutritive sucking is a fundamental process assuring the primary infant nourishment in the first months of life. When feeding is impaired for pathological conditions, the growth of the infant may be delayed with a cascade effect on the overall development. While literature studied nutritive sucking development in infants with feeding problems, like in severe premature babies or with low weight at birth, few works assesses to what extent different feeding bottles may influence feeding performance of healthy new-borns. This work proposes a method for functional characterization of feeding bottles based on the most promising and reliable indices used to quantitatively assess feeding skills in clinical applications. Thirty healthy newborns have been fed with two different bottles instrumented with a device for feeding monitoring. Their impact on feeding performance is objectively assessed and discussed. The approach presented here, even if preliminary, paves the way to a new method for functional characterization of feeding bottles. Further studies may allow to confirm our analyses with a higher number of bottles and infants.

A technological approach to studying motor planning ability in children at high risk for ASD.

In this work we propose a new method to study the development of motor planning abilities in children and, in particular, in children at high risk for ASD. Although several modified motor signs have been found in children with ASD, no specific markers enabling the early assessment of risk have been found yet. In this work, we discuss the problem posed by objective and quantitative behavioral analysis in non-structured environment. After an initial description of the main constraints imposed by the ecological approach, a technological and methodological solution to these issues is presented. Preliminary results on 12 children are reported and briefly discussed.