ArticleFrontiers in psychology2022
Bias in measurement of autism symptoms by spoken language level and non-verbal mental age in minimally verbal children with neurodevelopmental disorders.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cognitive and behavioral clinical outcome assessments in children with developmental and epileptic encephalopathies: Issues and instruments.Epilepsia · 2026Review
- Commentary: Exploring the clinical features of minimally verbal autistic children.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Examining the latent structure and correlates of sensory reactivity in autism: a multi-site integrative data analysis by the autism sensory research consortium.Molecular autism · 2023Article
- Examining the Latent Structure and Correlates of Sensory Reactivity in Autism: A Multi-site Integrative Data Analysis by the Autism Sensory Research Consortium.Research square · 2023Article
- Heterogeneity of Autism Characteristics in Genetic Syndromes: Key Considerations for Assessment and Support.Current developmental disorders reports · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
14 authors at 10 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Increasing numbers of children with known genetic conditions and/or intellectual disability are referred for evaluation of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), highlighting the need to refine autism symptom measures to facilitate differential diagnoses in children with cognitive and language impairments. Previous studies have reported decreased specificity of ASD screening and diagnostic measures in children with intellectual disability. However, little is known about how cognitive and language abilities impact the measurement of specific ASD symptoms in this group. We aggregated a large sample of young children (N = 1196; aged 31-119 months) to examine measurement invariance of ASD symptoms among minimally verbal children within the context of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) Module 1. Using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and moderated non-linear factor analysis (MNLFA), we examined how discrete behaviors were differentially associated with the latent symptom domains of social communication impairments (SCI) and restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRB) across spoken language levels and non-verbal mental age groupings. While the two-factor structure of SCI and RRB held consistently across language and cognitive levels, only partial invariance was observed for both ASD symptom domains of SCI and RRB. Specifically, four out of the 15 SCI items and one out of the three RRB items examined showed differential item functioning between children with "Few to No Words" and those with "Some Words"; and one SCI item and one RRB item showed differential item functioning across non-verbal mental age groups. Moreover, even after adjusting for the differential item functioning to reduce measurement bias across groups, there were still differences in ASD symptom domain scores across spoken language levels. These findings further underscore the influence of spoken language level on measurement of ASD symptoms and the importance of measuring ASD symptoms within refined spoken language levels, even among those with minimal verbal abilities.
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Registered trials
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