Brief Report: Preliminary Feasibility of the TEDI: A Novel Parent-Administered Telehealth Assessment for Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms in the First Year of Life.
Meagan R Talbott, Sarah Dufek, Lonnie Zwaigenbaum and 4 others
PMID 31776881WHAT IT FOUND
A telehealth protocol where parents coached to play with their infants successfully captured video data for autism screening.
All 22 planned sessions were completed, and parents rated the process as highly acceptable. This proves the method is feasible, not that it accurately diagnoses autism.
Key findings
01The telehealth assessment was feasible, with 100% of the 22 scheduled sessions completed and over 90% of videos meeting quality standards for coding.
02Parents rated the procedures as highly acceptable, and reliability between independent coders was good to excellent for most measures.
03The study lacked diagnostic outcome data, so it cannot determine if the scores actually predict later autism diagnoses.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was very small (11 infants) and from a high socioeconomic background, which limits generalizability. The study did not follow up to see if these infants were later diagnosed with autism, so the screening tool's accuracy is unknown. One measure of symptom severity (AOSI markers) had poor reliability between coders. The study was underpowered to detect significant effects beyond feasibility.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this as evidence that the TEDI protocol accurately screens for autism. The study only proved that parents could successfully record usable videos via telehealth. It did not test whether the resulting scores correctly identify infants who will later be diagnosed with ASD.