do you have to concentrate on walking "normally" in order to fit in?
THERE is a footpath outside the window of Nicole Rinehart's Monash University office at Notting Hill that provides a full-length view of people walking by.
Dr Rinehart, a clinical psychologist, has more interest in that process than most. For several years she has been studying the distinctive way of walking apparent in children with autism and Asperger's disorder. The research aims to help clinicians make earlier diagnosis of these two afflictions.
How do they walk? With a click of the computer mouse Dr Rinehart brings up an animated skeleton on screen, the digitally duplicated movements of a real-life patient. ''This is a child with autism,'' she says. ''They have a much more variable bouncy gait.'' The skeletal figure moves awkwardly with the right arm swinging across the body, rather than back and forward, and the pelvis shifting oddly from side to side.
There are other walking skeletons on her files. Here comes a man of 60 with Parkinson's disease - and now a young sufferer of Asperger's. Each shows the effect of the particular brain malfunction on the body's motor movements.
''You can see the difference in the upper body posture,'' she says of the Asperger's boy. ''In some ways we feel we are looking for a needle in a haystack because it is a very subtle disturbance in gait. This is one kid out of a large sample. They don't necessarily all look the same. What we are noticing is that children who have autism plus ADHD (attention deficit) have more severe motor difficulties. That's the focus of our current research.''
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