Digital tools for direct assessment of autism risk during early childhood: A systematic review.
Debarati Mukherjee, Supriya Bhavnani, Georgia Lockwood Estrin and 6 others
PMID 36336996WHAT IT FOUND
Digital tablet and smartphone tasks measuring social preference and motor movements consistently distinguished autistic children from typical peers in 38 pilot studies.
These tools are brief and automated, but none are validated for clinical screening yet.
Key findings
01Tasks assessing social and motor domains were the most promising for discriminating between ASD and TD groups.
02None of the included articles explicitly reported on measures of reliability or validity.
03All tasks using mobile technology could be completed in 8 minutes on average.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The review only included case-control studies, missing other designs. Most tools are at the pilot stage and were tested in lab or clinic settings, not real-world screening environments. None of the included studies reported reliability or validity data. Groups were often mismatched on gender and age, with ASD groups having more males and being older. The search was last updated in October 2020.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret these digital tasks as ready-made diagnostic tools. The studies were proof-of-concept pilots with small samples, and none reported reliability or validity data. These tools are not yet suitable for clinical screening or diagnosis.