Exploring Sensory Subgroups in Typical Development and Autism Spectrum Development Using Factor Mixture Modelling.
Patrick Dwyer, Emilio Ferrer, Clifford D Saron and 1 others
PMID 34499275WHAT IT FOUND
Caregiver reports on a sensory questionnaire separated autistic children into different patterns.
Two more atypical patterns had more anxiety and sleep problems at the first visit; later differences were weaker. It did not test treatment.
Key findings
01The selected solution had three classes. Classes 1-LEW and 2-GPL were dominated by autistic participants, while class 3-NL was a mixed group of typically-developing and autistic participants.
02At Time 1, autistic participants in class 1-LEW and class 2-GPL had higher anxiety than class 3-NL, and both had more sleep disturbances than class 3-NL; class 2-GPL also had more sleep disturbances than class 1-LEW.
03Among 115 autistic participants with usable EEG data, class 2-GPL had higher auditory ERP amplitudes to 80 dB sounds than class 1-LEW and class 3-NL after correction for multiple comparisons.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The model did not clearly settle on the best number of classes, and the authors note that other class numbers could also describe the data. The classes were not checked for stability by splitting the sample or resampling, so they may not replicate in another group. Some participants were lost between visits, and autistic participants in class 3-NL were less likely to have Time 3 SSP data. Sensory behaviour was measured only by one caregiver questionnaire, the SSP, and there were no neurophysiological measures for touch or vision. The study did not show that sensory patterns caused anxiety or sleep problems, because the direction of association was not resolved. The SSP subscale solution used here has not been tested for measurement invariance across autistic and non-autistic children. The EEG analysis used only auditory responses at Time 1, so it does not show how non-auditory sensory patterns relate to brain measures.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use these classes as a diagnostic label or as proof that a sensory treatment will work. The study did not test treatment, the number of classes was not clearly settled by the model, and the classes were not shown to be stable in another sample.