To detect signs of autism in toddlers, pediatricians routinely rely on parent-completed questionnaires about the child’s behavior. But parents’ answers may be influenced as much by their own bias about their child’s possible diagnosis as by their child’s actions.
A set of six questions about child development can identify parents who tend to overreport or underreport their child’s symptoms.
The researchers then shortened their general development questionnaire to include these six questions and 14 others. They gave it along with the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT), a standard screen for the disorder, to 145 parents with a child who had been referred for psychological evaluation at an autism center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
In the study, the M-CHAT alone accurately classified 107 of the 145 children, and missed 12 children with the disorder. The general development questions flagged six of those 12 children’s parents as underreporters. In addition, the M-CHAT wrongly classified 26 children as having autism, and the questions identified nine of their parents as overreporters.
