Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Lord (1992) published a brief report showing a trend for decreasing nonverbal IQ scores with increasing birth order in a sample of 16 autism multiplex families, and urged replication in a larger sample. In this report, analyses of nonverbal IQ scores for a sample of 144 autism multiplex families indicated that nonverbal IQ scores were significantly lower in secondborn compared with firstborn siblings with autism. This birth order effect was independent of gender as well as the age differences within sib pairs. No such birth order effects were found for social or communicative deficits as measured by the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), but there was a modest tendency for increased scores for ritualistic behaviors for the firstborn sibs. Further, there were no gender differences on nonverbal IQ scores in this sample. Results are discussed in terms of implications for genetic studies of autism.

This paper reports on the correlates of psychiatric illness in children with speech and language disorders. Of 600 children selected from a community speech clinic, 50% were found to have diagnosable psychiatric disorders according to DSM-III criteria. These “psychiatrically ill” children were compared to the “psychiatrically well” children in the sample on a variety of developmental, socioeconomic, medical, and psychosocial factors. Although some differences were found between the well and ill children in other factors, the majority of the differences, and the most highly significant differences, were found in areas of linguistic functioning. It is hypothesized that this finding may be relevant not only to understanding the association between linguistic and psychiatric functioning but also to predicting the outcome and planning treatment for childhood speech and language disorders.

Chúng tôi đã so sánh hồi cứu giữa 2 nhóm trẻ em nhận liệu pháp hành vi (n=13) hoặc liệu pháp tổng hợp (n=15) với trung bình 12 giờ mỗi tuần. Trẻ em được đánh giá về trí tuệ, ngôn ngữ, chức năng thích ứng và hành vi không thích ứng trước điều trị và sau 2 năm điều trị. Các nhóm không khác biệt đáng kể tại thời điểm trước điều trị. Sau 2 năm điều trị, nhóm hành vi đã có những tiến bộ lớn hơn nhóm tổng hợp ở hầu hết các lĩnh vực. Tuy nhiên, những tiến bộ này khiêm tốn hơn so với những gì được báo cáo trong các nghiên cứu trước đây với trẻ em nhận liệu pháp hành vi cường độ cao hơn, và vẫn còn nghi bàn về việc liệu chúng có ý nghĩa lâm sàng hay không.

The objectives of this paper are to review the literature on the diagnostic validity of schizotypal personality disorders (SPD) in childhood and to present the results of a chart review of 20 DSM-III-defined SPD children. The literature on this disorder is relatively limited, and although there is some agreement on clinical presentation, various authors have used different diagnostic labels. The DSM-III criteria for SPD appear to have acceptable content validity, but whether these are the best criteria for identifying a disorder with a particular etiology and natural history has not been investigated. The chart review on 20 SPD children presents information on early history, family background, neurodevelopmental impairments, and the degree of overlap with other, better-established diagnoses. On the basis of the chart review, suggestions for further research on the diagnostic validity of SPD are made.

This study describes the adaptation of the autism diagnostic observation schedule (ADOS-2) to assess autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in adults with intellectual disability (ID) and hearing loss who communicate primarily visually. This adapted ADOS-2 was applied to residents of specialized therapeutic living communities (n = 56). The internal consistency of the adapted ADOS-2 was excellent for the Social Affect of modules 2 and 3 and acceptable for Restricted and Repetitive Behaviors subscale of module 2, but poor for module 3. Interrater reliability was comparable to standard ADOS-2 modules 1–3. Results suggest that autism symptoms of deaf adults with ID can be reliably identified by an adapted ADOS-2, provided adequate expertise in deafness, ID, ASD and proficiency in signed language by the administrator.

The current study examined the relationship between early language ability and autistic-like traits in adulthood, utilising data from 644 participants from a longitudinal study of the general population. Language performance at 2 years was measured with the Language Development Survey (LDS), and at 20 years the participants completed the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Vocabulary size at 2 years was negatively associated with Total AQ score, as well as scores on the Communication, and Social Skills subscales. Adults who had been late talkers were also more likely to have ‘high’ scores on the Communication subscale. This is the first study to show an association between early language ability and autistic-like traits in adulthood.