The Criterion Validity of the First Year Inventory and the Quantitative-CHecklist for Autism in Toddlers: A Longitudinal Study.

Annalisa Levante,Serena Petrocchi,Flavia Lecciso

doi:10.3390/brainsci10100729

Annalisa Levante, Serena Petrocchi + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10100729

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Abstract

Pediatric surveillance through screening procedures is needed to detect warning signs of risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder under 24 months of age and to promote early diagnosis and treatment. The main purpose of this study is to extend the literature regarding the psychometric properties of two screening tools, the First Year Inventory (FYI) and the Quantitative-CHecklist for Autism in Toddler (Q-CHAT), testing their criterion validity. They were administered during a three-wave approach involving the general population. At T1, 657 children were tested with the FYI and 36 of them were found to be at risk. At T2, 545 were tested with the Q-CHAT and 29 of them were found to be at risk. At T3, 12 out of the 36 children with a high score on the FYI and 11 out of the 29 children with a high score on the Q-CHAT were compared to 15 typically developing children. The criterion validity was tested considering the severity of the autistic symptoms, emotional/behavioral problems, and limited global functioning as criteria. Accuracy parameters were also calculated. Furthermore, we investigated which dimension of each questionnaire better predicted the aforementioned criterion. The results corroborated the hypotheses and confirmed the criterion validity of FYI and Q-CHAT.

Highlights

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) [1] is one of the most known childhood health conditions, with early-onset before 3 years of age and symptoms including a combination of social, communicative, and behavioral impairments.Several studies [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] emphasized that early interventions, especially implemented during the opportunity window for brain plasticity, improve long-term outcomes
The present study examined the criterion validity of two age-specific screening tools, which can be administered during two key developmental moments for the identification of early risk factors associated with autism
The present study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the First Year Inventory (FYI) and Quantitative-CHecklist for Autism in Toddler (Q-CHAT) as a two-step approach for the general population with a longitudinal study

Summary

Introduction

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) [1] is one of the most known childhood health conditions, with early-onset before 3 years of age and symptoms including a combination of social, communicative, and behavioral impairments.Several studies [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] emphasized that early interventions, especially implemented during the opportunity window for brain plasticity, improve long-term outcomes. Interventions increase children’s performance in several areas, such as communication abilities, adaptive functioning, facial emotion production, and prosocial behaviors [2,10,11,12,13], decrease the severity of the autistic traits [6,14,15], and offer mechanisms for parents in coping with the grief resulting from the child’s diagnosis [16]. Intervention requires early identification of risk factors followed by early diagnosis, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics [17]. Examples of behaviors that are deficient or absent in cases of autism are joint attention, declarative pointing, communication skills, pretend play, use of gestures, and object exploration [26,27,28,29,30,31,32]

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