Conducting research with minimally verbal participants with autism spectrum disorder.
Helen Tager-Flusberg, Daniela Plesa Skwerer, Robert M Joseph and 5 others
PMID 27354431WHAT IT FOUND
Adapting ABA principles allowed researchers to obtain nonverbal IQ scores from most participants.
Eye-tracking and EEG success rates were lower, with older adolescents generally easier to test than younger children. These methods enable data collection but require significant time and family cooperation.
Key findings
01Modifications to the Leiter-3 assessment, including brief verbal instructions and hand-over-hand guidance, resulted in obtaining nonverbal IQ scores from 16 of 18 younger participants and all 14 older participants.
02Eye-tracking calibration was successful in 84% of participants, but valid data required excluding outliers rather than filtering by low validity scores, resulting in usable data for 13 younger and 11 older participants.
03EEG completion rates were approximately 40% for younger children and 70% for adolescents, with older participants generally easier to test, possibly due to more prior experience with structured ABA environments.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study reports on methods and success rates rather than testing the efficacy of an intervention. The sample size is small (32 participants). Success rates varied significantly by age and task, with younger children being harder to test. The authors note ethical challenges in determining when a participant is actively refusing versus experiencing transitory distress. Data validity for eye-tracking was low in some participants, requiring outlier exclusion rather than standard validity filtering.
Declared interests
The paper is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). No commercial conflicts of interest are reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the successful completion rates as evidence that these specific testing methods improve patient outcomes. This paper describes how to collect research data from a difficult-to-test population, not the therapeutic effectiveness of the adaptations used.