The Developmental Check-In: Development and initial testing of an autism screening tool targeting young children from...

Area of Science:

• Developmental Pediatrics
• Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
• Health Disparities

Background:

• Children from low-income, minority, or limited English proficiency families experience delayed or missed autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses.
• Existing screening tools may present barriers related to literacy and language.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and evaluate the Developmental Check-In, a novel pictorial tool designed for early ASD identification.
• To assess the tool's effectiveness in screening ASD among underserved populations with varying literacy levels.

Main Methods:

• The Developmental Check-In, utilizing pictures to illustrate target behaviors, was administered to 376 children aged 24–60 months from underserved communities.
• The tool's ability to differentiate between autism spectrum disorder and non-autism spectrum disorder was analyzed.

Main Results:

• The Developmental Check-In demonstrated good discrimination ability for autism spectrum disorder (area-under-the-curve = 0.75) across the tested age range.
• A significant majority (26 out of 28) of the Developmental Check-In items were predictive of autism spectrum disorder.

Conclusions:

• The pictorial nature of the Developmental Check-In may reduce linguistic and health literacy barriers in autism screening.
• This tool holds potential for improving early identification of autism spectrum disorder in vulnerable and diverse populations.