Autism Spectrum Symptomatology in Children with Williams Syndrome Who Have Phrase Speech or Fluent Language.
Bonita P Klein-Tasman, Faye van der Fluit, Carolyn B Mervis
PMID 29671106WHAT IT FOUND
Children with Williams syndrome who speak in phrases or fluently still showed autism-spectrum behaviours on a standardised autism observation, but most did not.
Some social quirks may reflect Williams syndrome rather than a second autism diagnosis.
Key findings
01Using the ADOS social affect scores, 13 of 40 children with phrase speech and 16 of 60 children with fluent language were classified on the autism spectrum.
02Children classified on the autism spectrum showed significantly more abnormal behaviours on 17 of 28 ADOS items for phrase speech and 18 of 29 items for fluent language.
03For children with phrase speech, autism-spectrum classification was linked to lower IQ test scores, but for children with fluent language it was not.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The children had ADOS classifications, not formal clinical autism diagnoses, so the results do not show how many would meet diagnostic criteria for autism. There were no comparison groups of children with autism or other developmental disabilities, so it is unclear how specific the observed patterns are to Williams syndrome. The ADOS is a short structured observation, so some repetitive interests or everyday behaviours may not have been fully captured. The paper reports assessment results, not treatment outcomes, so it cannot show whether communication or behaviour interventions help.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that Williams syndrome itself is an autism diagnosis or that every social difficulty means a second autism diagnosis. Most children in this study did not meet the observation cutoff, and some common Williams syndrome behaviours were not tied to autism-spectrum classification.