The Autism Symptom Interview School-Age: A Brief Telephone Interview to Identify Autism Spectrum Disorders in 5-to-12-Year-Old Children

摘要

Lay AbstractRecent advances in multiple areas of autism research, including genetics and epidemiology, have increased the need for large numbers of participants with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The Autism Symptom Interview (ASI) is a brief phone interview that was designed to facilitate rapid ascertainment of children with ASD for research studies. The ASI is based on questions from the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), a comprehensive, semi-structured parent interview, but the ASI is designed to be administered in approximately 20 minutes by interviewers with minimal training. This study reports on the initial validation of the ASI, School-Age, for children ages 5 to 12 years. Children with previous diagnoses or suspicion of ASD or another neurodevelopmental disorder participated in a comprehensive diagnostic assessment as part of the study and were classified as ASD or non-ASD following the assessment. The ASI scores of children with and without ASD were then compared. For verbal children (defined as using phrases or better on a daily basis), the ASI showed reasonable accuracy in identifying children with ASD (sensitivity=.87), but specificity was low (.62). However, when ASI scores were considered together with scores from the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), sensitivity was maintained at .82, and specificity improved to .92. These findings suggest that the ASI school age may serve as a useful tool to more quickly classify children with ASD for research purposes.