Identifying Atypical Development: A Role of Day-Care Workers?
Dajie Zhang, Iris Krieber-Tomantschger, Luise Poustka and 5 others
PMID 31144232WHAT IT FOUND
Day-care workers with advanced special-needs training and experience with very young children or developmental disorders noticed more expert-listed early features in video clips.
Longer childcare work alone did not improve recognition. This was not a real-world diagnostic test.
Key findings
01Teachers with additional advanced pedagogical or special-needs training scored higher overall than teachers without it, carers, and pre-service student teachers.
02Rich task-relevant experience was associated with higher overall scores, but this association was significant for teachers and not for carers.
03Longer general childcare work experience was not significantly associated with higher overall scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The final sample was 60 participants, so the study is small. Participants watched short, preselected video clips instead of observing children over days, weeks, and months in real settings. Some participants may have felt uncomfortable in the experimental situation, which could have affected their performance. The benchmark feature list was created by three senior members of the research group. The study did not test whether day-care workers would notice or report concerns in real childcare settings.
Declared interests
Funding was reported from the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, the Austrian Science Fund, and the Franz-Lanyar-Foundation.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that day-care workers can identify fragile X syndrome or other developmental disorders. They watched short preselected clips and were scored against a benchmark made by the research team, and many did not identify specific features; the study shows associations with training and experience, not diagnostic accuracy.