Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kartha, Yadhu, Anderson, Conor, Foster, Jenny, Hamlin, Theresa, Lantz, Johanna, Lay, Ryan, Hahn, Juergen, Clifford, Gari D., Kwon, Hyeokhyen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.17618
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914583057268736
author Kartha, Yadhu
Anderson, Conor
Foster, Jenny
Hamlin, Theresa
Lantz, Johanna
Lay, Ryan
Hahn, Juergen
Clifford, Gari D.
Kwon, Hyeokhyen
author_facet Kartha, Yadhu
Anderson, Conor
Foster, Jenny
Hamlin, Theresa
Lantz, Johanna
Lay, Ryan
Hahn, Juergen
Clifford, Gari D.
Kwon, Hyeokhyen
contents Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by challenges with social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior, with significant variability in presentation. Approximately a quarter of children with ASD are classified as having profound autism, who often exhibit challenging behaviors, such as self-injurious behavior, aggression, elopement, or pica, that pose serious safety risks and disrupt learning in educational settings. Prior work has applied wearable sensors and machine learning to detect challenging behaviors, but has been largely confined to controlled laboratory environments. This work demonstrates that predicting challenging behavior episodes is feasible in a real-world special education classroom. We collected approximately 110.7 hours of labeled multimodal wearable data comprising accelerometry, electrodermal activity (EDA), and skin temperature from 9 children and young adults aged 10 to 21 years across standard classroom sessions. We fine-tuned state-of-the-art foundation models for multimodal wearable time-series analysis and show that challenging behavior episodes can be predicted up to 10 minutes in advance with an AUC-ROC of 0.78. These results establish a concrete foundation for developing proactive in-class intervention systems that enable teachers to minimize the safety risks of challenging behaviors in special education classrooms
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_17618
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Prediction of Challenging Behaviors Associated with Profound Autism in a Classroom Setting Using Wearable Sensors
Kartha, Yadhu
Anderson, Conor
Foster, Jenny
Hamlin, Theresa
Lantz, Johanna
Lay, Ryan
Hahn, Juergen
Clifford, Gari D.
Kwon, Hyeokhyen
Artificial Intelligence
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by challenges with social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior, with significant variability in presentation. Approximately a quarter of children with ASD are classified as having profound autism, who often exhibit challenging behaviors, such as self-injurious behavior, aggression, elopement, or pica, that pose serious safety risks and disrupt learning in educational settings. Prior work has applied wearable sensors and machine learning to detect challenging behaviors, but has been largely confined to controlled laboratory environments. This work demonstrates that predicting challenging behavior episodes is feasible in a real-world special education classroom. We collected approximately 110.7 hours of labeled multimodal wearable data comprising accelerometry, electrodermal activity (EDA), and skin temperature from 9 children and young adults aged 10 to 21 years across standard classroom sessions. We fine-tuned state-of-the-art foundation models for multimodal wearable time-series analysis and show that challenging behavior episodes can be predicted up to 10 minutes in advance with an AUC-ROC of 0.78. These results establish a concrete foundation for developing proactive in-class intervention systems that enable teachers to minimize the safety risks of challenging behaviors in special education classrooms
title Prediction of Challenging Behaviors Associated with Profound Autism in a Classroom Setting Using Wearable Sensors
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.17618