Purpose: Intentional communication acts, or purposefully directed vocalizations and gestures, are particularly difficult for infants at elevated likelihood for eventual diagnosis of autism. The ability to measure and track intentional communication in infancy thus has the potential to aid early identification and intervention efforts. This study…

The shortage of autism specialists and lack of culturally sensitive autism assessment tools are helping to perpetuate racial and ethnic disparities in autism identification and treatment. Using DisCrit as a framework, this quantitative study examined the utility of one autism assessment tool, the Social Responsiveness Scale, second edition (SRS-2)…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to extend the assessment of the psychometric properties of the Modified Barium Swallow Impairment Profile (MBSImP). Here, we re-examined structural validity and internal consistency using a large clinical-registry data set and formally examined rater reliability in a smaller data set. Method: This study…

Simple and low-cost observational-tools to detect symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are still necessary. The OERA is a new assessment tool to screen children eliciting observable behaviors with no substantial knowledge on ASD required. The sample was 99 children aged 3-10: 76 with ASD and 23 without ASD (11/23 had intellectual…

Borrowing from a clinical psychology observational methodology, thin-slice observations were used to assess autism characteristics in toddlers. Thin-slices are short observations taken from a longer behavior stream which are assigned ratings by multiple raters using a 5-point scale. The raters' observations are averaged together to assign a…

The Emotional and Behavioral Screener (EBS) is a universal screening instrument designed to identify students whose excessive problem behaviors put them at risk of the education disability category of emotional disturbance (ED). This article reports findings from three studies that address the reliability and validity of the EBS. Studies 1 and 2…

For identifying children with four major kinds of verbal learning disabilities viz. reading disability, speech and language comprehension disability, writing disability and mathematics disability, the present task was undertaken to construct and standardize verbal learning disabilities checklist. This checklist was developed by keeping in view the…

A study involving 30 Argentineans with autism evaluated the validity of the Autism Diagnostic Inventory-Telephone Screening in Spanish (ADI-TSS). The final version of the ADI-TSS could be assessed in 20 to 40 minutes and demonstrated a high validity, high interrater reliability, and high internal consistency. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

This study assessed the interrater reliability of a Swedish version of the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), an instrument for screening and diagnosis of autism. The CARS was used for rating autistic behavior by two investigators in 25 children. Results indicated fair to excellent agreement. Aspects of validity and reliability are discussed.…

This study assessed the psychometric properties of two subscales of the Adelaide Behaviour Disorder Scale that have been hypothesized to describe conduct problems and emotional problems of adults with intellectual disability. Criterion scores for identifying individuals needing clinical intervention were established and validated against…

A study examined teachers' and parents' ratings of 39 developmentally handicapped (DH) and 9 learning disabled children on the revised Vineland and the AAMD Adaptive Behavior Scale. Teachers rated children eligible for DH placement more frequently than parents. The adaptive behavior ratings of the two instruments differed significantly. (Author/CB)