Dimensions of Autistic Traits Rated by Parents of Children and Adolescents with Suspected Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Teresa Del Giudice, Christina Dose, Anja Görtz-Dorten and 7 others
PMID 33420648WHAT IT FOUND
In 312 children with suspected autism, a parent questionnaire’s total score and restricted/repetitive behaviour section appeared to reflect autistic traits.
The social communication section did not measure a separate kind of problem; it mostly reflected overall autism traits.
Key findings
01All items reflected a general autism factor, but the social communication/interaction items did not form a clear separate factor.
02The restricted/repetitive behaviours section had a meaningful separate component, and the same general structure was supported across the two age groups tested.
03The questionnaire’s scores were internally consistent and aligned more closely with autism-specific measures than with general behaviour-problem measures.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample came from one German university clinic and was mostly boys and mostly children who met autism spectrum disorder criteria, so it may not apply to girls, community settings, or other countries. The social communication/interaction section did not behave as a separate domain, so a score on that section is not clearly interpretable apart from overall autism traits. Age differences could only be tested by splitting children into two broad groups, 2 to 10 years and 11 to 18 years, because the sample was too small for more detailed age analyses. Data were collected during routine clinical care, and some comparison measures were not available at the item level. The study examined only parent-rated symptoms, not self-report or clinician-rated data. The questionnaire was not tested for whether it can distinguish children with autism spectrum disorder from children without it.
Declared interests
The supplied text names Projekt DEAL as funder. No additional conflict-of-interest statement is included.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read a high social communication/interaction score as proof of a separate communication problem. In this study, those items were mainly driven by the general autism factor and did not form a clear independent factor.