Early Communication Indicator (ECI) for Young Children with Autism
Project Description:
The early, foundational social-communication and language skills of children with ASD predict their functioning into adolescence and even adulthood, with functional use of language by age 5 being one of the best predictors of later outcomes. However, translating this established finding into effective interventions that consistently produce meaningful outcomes for most persons with ASD has proven challenging. While many intervention studies have been conducted to date, it is clear there is a considerable range of intervention success across cases within studies, and it is even more clear that we lack well validated outcome measures to target this key social-communication symptom domain which is so strongly tied to prognosis. It has become difficult to sort out whether non-significant treatment effects are a result of truly ineffective interventions, or rather poorly validated measures for this population. Further, the majority of validated social-communication measures in ASD that are used in treatment studies were designed to assess, diagnosis or behaviorally phenotype this core symptom domain and not to detect change over time. Our group has been working for many years to validate measures of key social-communication and language skills in young children with disabilities, including ASD. We propose to (a) adapt an established instrument for this domain – The Early Communication Indicator (ECI) for use in young children diagnosed with ASD, ages 12 – 60 months; (b) use a robust and representative multisite sample of well-characterized children with ASD (n = 400) to determine the psychometric features of this adapted instrument; (c) determine how the adapted instrument captures developmental change over time; and (d) explore the feasibility of scoring the measure live vs. via videotape to optimize its future use in clinical trials. Our overall goal in this project is to use the results of the proposed psychometric and validation studies in an iterative data-driven fashion to construct a version of the ECI that is feasible, blind-able, psychometrically sound, and sensitive to change.
Keyword(s):
Mental/Behavioral Health – Autism, Clinical Care, Developmental Disabilities, Early Childhood – Developmental Health (including developmental screening), Early Childhood – General, Health Equity, Mental/Behavioral Health – General , Social Determinants of Health, Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults with Special Health Care Needs
Core Function(s):
Training Trainees, Performing Direct and/or Demonstration Services, Performing Research or Evaluation, Developing & Disseminating Information, Other Direct/Model Services
Area of Emphasis
Education & Early Intervention
Target Audience:
Community Trainees / Short term trainees, Professionals and Para-Professionals, Children/Adolescents with Disabilities/SHCN, General Public
Unserved or Under-served Populations:
Racial or Ethnic Minorities, Disadvantaged Circumstances, Geographic Areas, Rural/Remote, Urban, Specific Groups
Primary Target Audience Geographic Descriptor:
Another State, Single-County, Mulit-County, State, Regional, National
COVID-19 Related Data:
N/A
