Abstract
People with sensory impairments combined with intellectual disabilities show behaviours that are similar to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The instrument Observation of Autism in people with Sensory and Intellectual Disabilities (OASID) was developed to diagnose ASD in this target group. The current study focuses on the psychometric properties of OASID. Sixty individuals with intellectual disabilities in combination with visual impairments and/or deafblindness participated in this study. The OASID assessment was administered and rated by three independent observers. By means of expert consensus cut-off scores for OASID were created. To determine the concurrent validity OASID was compared with the Pervasive Developmental Disorder for People with Mental Retardation (PDD-MRS) and the Childhood Autism Rating Scale second edition (CARS-2). The intra-rater reliability, the inter-rater reliability, internal consistency and concurrent validity of OASID were good to excellent. Cut-off scores were established based on criteria from the DSM-5. OASID was able to differentiate between four severity levels of ASD.
Highlights
People with sensory impairments combined with intellectual disabilities show behaviours that are similar to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
People who have intellectual disabilities combined with visual impairments or deafblindness show impairments that may occur in autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
The selection criteria were: a moderate to profound intellectual disability combined with a visual impairment or blindness according to the criteria of the ICD-10 (World Health Organization 2016), or deafblindness, which was defined as any combination of a visual and auditory impairment
Summary
People who have intellectual disabilities combined with visual impairments or deafblindness show impairments that may occur in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (de Vaan et al 2013; Hoevenaars-van den Boom et al 2009; van Gent 2012). In the domains of social and communicative development and daily living skills people with both sensory and intellectual disabilities show many typical features of ASD (Dalby et al 2009; Evenhuis et al 2009; Hoevenaars-van den Boom et al 2009; Munde and Vlaskamp 2014) Examples of these behaviours include: stereotyped movements, such as hand waving and body rocking (Gense and Gense 2005; Medeiros et al 2014), lack of reciprocity in social interaction (Dale et al 2014), poor use of language for social purposes and awkward pragmatic language use (Tadić et al 2010). This paper consists of a description of some psychometric properties of OASID and a proposed heuristic to classify people with ASD that is in line with the current classification of ASD in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013)
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