ArticleAutism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research2025
Limited Effect of Masking During COVID-19 Pandemic on ADOS-2 Algorithm Scores in Toddlers With and Without Autism.
Article in Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Converging neurotrophic-immune signaling in autism spectrum disorder: integrative roles of klotho, GDNF/GFRA-1, IGF-1 and GLP-1 pathways.Metabolic brain disease · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition (ADOS-2) constitutes one of the most widely used diagnostic instruments for autism and involves a direct face-to-face interaction between clinician and child. During the COVID-19 pandemic, administration of the ADOS-2 continued in several countries, with the requirement of face mask protection. It has been hypothesized that mask wearing may have disrupted the dynamic of child-clinician interaction and differentially affected toddlers with autism. We compared ADOS-2 algorithm scores between cohorts of toddlers evaluated before (pre-COVID-19, n = 232) and during the pandemic (COVID-19, n = 116). The COVID-19 cohort included 41 toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (AUT, Mage = 25.4, SD = 3.8), 34 toddlers with other neurodevelopmental conditions (NDC, Mage = 22.3, SD = 5.0), and 41 typically developing toddlers (TD, Mage = 20.4, SD = 3.6) recruited between September 2020 and April 2023. The pre-COVID-19 cohort was selected from 409 assessments conducted from January 2013 to March 2020. Propensity matching was used to match the pre- and COVID-19 cohorts on sex, chronological age, and verbal and nonverbal developmental quotient (DQ) scores. Ordered logistic regression analyses were computed for social affect (SA) and restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRB) algorithm total and item scores, with cohort (pre-COVID-19/COVID-19) as a fixed factor for each diagnostic group. The analyses revealed a limited impact of cohort on the algorithm scores in all three diagnostic groups. Item-level analysis revealed a significant cohort effect only on two out of 20 items: shared enjoyment and joint attention, with higher (more atypical) scores found in the COVID-19 than in the pre-COVID-19 cohorts. The resiliency of the algorithm and item-level scores to the effect of masking speaks to the strength of the diagnostic tool and its ability to capture a range of social, communication, and repetitive behaviors under both standard and nonstandard conditions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.