Joanne Volden

Brief Report: Pragmatic Language in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Relationships to Measures of Ability and Disability

Pragmatic language skill is regarded as an area of universal deficit in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but little is known about factors related to its development and how it in turn might contribute to skills needed to function in everyday contexts or to the expression of ASD-related symptoms. This study investigated these relationships in 37 high-functioning children with ASD. Multiple regression analyses revealed that structural language skills significantly predicted pragmatic language performance, but also that a significant portion of variance in pragmatic scores could not be accounted for by structural language or nonverbal cognition. Pragmatic language scores, in turn, accounted for significant variance in ADOS Communication and Socialization performance, but did not uniquely predict level of communicative or social adaptive functioning on the Vineland. These findings support the notion of pragmatic language impairment as integral to ASD but also highlight the need to measure pragmatic skills in everyday situations, to target adaptive skills in intervention and to intervene in functional, community-based contexts.

Validating the Repetitive Behavior Scale-Revised in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

This study examined the factor structure of the Repetitive Behavior Scale-Revised (RBS-R) in a sample of 287 preschool-aged children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine six competing structural models. Spearman’s rank order correlations were calculated to examine the associations between factor scores and variables of interest. The 3- and 5-factor models were selected as preferable on the basis of fit statistics and parsimony. For both models, the strongest correlations were with problem behavior scores on the Child Behavior Checklist and repetitive behavior scores on the ADI-R. Developmental index standard scores were not correlated with factors in either model. The results confirm the utility of the RBS-R as a measure of repetitive behaviors in young children with ASD.

Using Lego Robots to Estimate Cognitive Ability in Children Who Have Severe Physical Disabilities

Purpose. To determine whether low-cost robots provide a means by which children with severe disabilities can demonstrate understanding of cognitive concepts. Method. Ten children, ages 4 to 10, diagnosed with cerebral palsy and related motor conditions, participated. Participants had widely variable motor, cognitive and receptive language skills, but all were non-speaking. A Lego Invention [1] ‘roverbot’ was used to carry out a range of functional tasks from single-switch replay of pre-stored movements to total control of the movement in two dimensions. The level of sophistication achieved on hierarchically arranged play tasks was used to estimate cognitive skills. Results. The 10 children performed at one of the six hierarchically arranged levels from ‘no interaction’ through ‘simple cause and effect’ to ‘development and execution of a plan’. Teacher interviews revealed that children were interested in the robot, enjoyed interacting with it and demonstrated changes in behaviour and social and language skills following interaction. Conclusions. Children with severe physical disabilities can control a Lego robot to perform un-structured play tasks. In some cases, they were able to display more sophisticated cognitive skills through manipulating the robot than in traditional standardised tests. Success with the robot could be a proxy measure for children who have cognitive abilities but cannot demonstrate them in standard testing.

Phenotypic Overlap Between Core Diagnostic Features and Emotional/Behavioral Problems in Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study examined the phenotypic overlap between core diagnostic features and emotional/behavioral problems in a sample of 335 preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Results from principal component analysis (2 components; 49.70% variance explained) suggested substantial phenotypic overlap between core diagnostic features and emotional/behavioral problems. Component I, Emotional Behavioral Repetitive Problems, was independent of the children’s intellectual, adaptive functioning, and structural language abilities. Component II, Social Communication Deficits, was negatively related to the children’s intellectual, adaptive functioning, and structural language abilities. Both components were positively related to parental stress. This exploratory study contributes to our understanding of the ASD phenotype and provides further support for including emotional/behavioral problems as part of the clinical characterization of children with ASD.

Scores of Typically Developing Children on the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales-Infancy to Preschool

Norms for the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales (PDMS) and the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales, second edition (PDMS-2) are based on cross-sectional data that do not provide information on how the scores of individual children vary over time. This study examined intra-individual variability of PDMS fine and gross motor scores of 77 typically developing children at 9, 11, 13, 16, and 21 months of age and PDMS and PDMS-2 fine and gross motor scores at 4 years. Correlations between scores over time ranged from .13 to .45. PDMS and PDMS-2 scores were correlated at .71 and .75 with significantly different means, indicating that the two versions are not equivalent for 4-year-old children. Most children scored above the 16th percentile, the suggested cut-off on the PDMS, at both 21-month and 4-year assessments, but their percentile ranks fluctuated considerably. Use of confidence intervals contributes to accurate interpretation of scores by differentiating true change in a childs score from change due to measurement error.

Cognitive Scripts in Autistic Children and Adolescents

People normally rely on cognitive scripts to structure social interaction. As the dysfunctional social behavior of people with autism extends to situations that are commonly scripted, one wonders whether a partial explantion might be either absent or deficient scriptal representations. Twenty-four relatively high-functioning subjects with autism were compared to typically developing children who had been selected to be similar to the autistic subjects in terms of nonverbal mental age and language level. All subjects were presented with a series of three tasks designed to assess the presence of cognitive social scripts. Results indicated that basic scriptal knowledge was intact but that reliable differences in expressive language persisted.

Influence of reporting effects on the association between maternal depression and child autism spectrum disorder behaviors.

BACKGROUND Maximizing measurement accuracy is an important aim in child development assessment and research. Parents are essential informants in the diagnostic process, and past research suggests that certain parental characteristics may influence how they report information about their children. This has not been studied in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to date. We aimed, therefore, to investigate the possible effect that maternal depression might have on a mothers reports of her childs ASD behaviors. Using structural equation modeling, we disaggregated shared from unique variation in the association between latent variable measures of maternal depression and ASD behaviors. METHODS Data were obtained from a study of preschoolers aged 2-4 newly diagnosed with ASD (n = 214). Information from a parent questionnaire, a semi-structured parent interview, and a semi-structured observational assessment was used to develop a latent variable measure of child ASD behaviors. Mothers reported on their own depression symptoms. We first modeled the covariance between maternal depression and child ASD behavior. Then, to quantify unique variation, we added covariance terms between maternal depression and the residual variation associated with the individual measures of child ASD behaviors. RESULTS The model demonstrated excellent fit to the underlying data. Maternal self-report of depression symptoms exhibited a significant association with the unique variance of the questionnaire report but not with the latent variable measure of child ASD behavior. A gradient pattern of association was demonstrated between maternal depression and the unique variance of the ASD measures: most strongly for the maternal questionnaire report, more weakly for the maternal semi-structured interview, and to a trivial extent for the observational interview. CONCLUSIONS Parental depression may influence reporting of ASD behaviors in preschoolers. Shared method effects may also contribute to bias. This finding highlights the importance of obtaining multimethod reports of child ASD symptoms.

Factor analysis of the Parenting Stress Index‐Short Form with parents of young children with autism spectrum disorders

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the underlying factor structure of the Parenting Stress Index‐Short Form (PSI‐SF) in a large cohort of parents of young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A secondary goal was to examine relationships between PSI‐SF factors and autism severity, child behavior problems, and parental mental health variables that have been shown to be related to parental stress in previous research. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine the three‐factor structure described in the PSI‐SF manual [Abidin, 1995 ]: parental distress, parent–child dysfunctional interaction, and difficult child. Results of the CFA indicated that the three‐factor structure was unacceptable when applied to the study sample. Thus, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted and suggested a six‐factor model as the best alternative for the PSI‐SF index. Spearmans correlations revealed significant positive correlations with moderate to large effect sizes between the revised PSI‐SF factors and autism severity, externalizing and internalizing child behaviors, and an index of parent mental health. The revised factors represent more narrowly defined aspects of the three original subscales of the PSI‐SF and might prove to be advantageous in both research and clinical applications. Autism Res 2011,4:336–346.

Investigating the measurement properties of the Social Responsiveness Scale in preschool children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The purpose of this study was to examine the measurement properties of the Social Responsiveness Scale in an accelerated longitudinal sample of 4-year-old preschool children with the complementary approaches of categorical confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch analysis. Measurement models based on the literature and other hypothesized measurement models which were tested using categorical confirmatory factor analysis did not fit well and were not unidimensional. Rasch analyses showed that a 30-item subset met criteria of unidimensionality and invariance across item, person, and over time; and this subset exhibited convergent validity with other child outcomes. This subset was shown to have enhanced psychometric properties and could be used in measuring social responsiveness among preschool age children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

The NeuroDevNet Autism Spectrum Disorders Demonstration Project

The NeuroDevNet Autism Spectrum Disorder Demonstration Project interfaces at many levels with the networks research themes and priorities. Our interdisciplinary team aims to improve understanding of genetic factors underlying vulnerability to autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) to develop better diagnostic strategies and, ultimately, to pinpoint molecular pathways relevant to developing biologically based treatments. Linking our existing longitudinal ASD cohorts with both genetics and neuroimaging studies will provide, for the first time, integrated data on how the genetic variation influences brain and behavioral development in ASD. Importantly, as our science progresses and we translate this information to the health care system, we will also educate policy makers, media, and business, so an informed society is prepared to capitalize on new genomic advances and effectively integrate these into health services for the broader community. We believe that this research has the potential to transform assessment and care for individuals with ASD.