An Epidemiological and Diagnostic Study of Asperger Syndrome According to Four Sets of Diagnostic Criteria

When does the Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ) predict autism spectrum disorders in primary school-aged children?

“…The participants of this study were drawn from two ongoing studies concerning higher-functioning (FSIQ C 50) children with AS or autism: (1) the ''total population study'' [18], consisting of 4,408 children (FSIQ C 50) and (2) the ''outpatient study'' of high-functioning (FSIQ C 80) outpatient children with AS/autism, consisting of 34 children. The participants were then divided into three partly overlapping groups: (1) ''total population group'': 4,408 eightyear-old children (mean age 8.3, range 7.8-8.8) from the ''total population study'' including 13 outpatients with ASD (FSIQ C 50), (2) ''validation sample'': 104 eight-year-old children (mean age 8.3, range 7.8-8.8) from the ''total population study'' including the 13 outpatients mentioned above with ASD (FSIQ C 50) and (3) ''outpatient group'': 47 outpatient children aged 7-12 (mean age 9.7, range 7.7-12.2) with ASD (FSIQ C 50) from Oulu University Hospital (n = 43) or at Tahkokangas Service Centre in Oulu (i.e.…”

“…The ''total population study'' started in September 2000 in the Northern Ostrobothnia Hospital District area [18] (Fig. 1).…”

“…In turn, Posserud et al [19] reported low-to-moderate agreement between parents and teachers when assessing autistic features in a total population of 7-9-year-old children by using the ASSQ. As a consequence of low-to-moderate agreement, it is well grounded to assume that the number of informants-a multi-informant versus a single-informant approach-may influence diagnostics [9,15,18,23]. Because of large differences across informants, the need to gather information from both families and schools when screening for ASDs was also suggested by Posserud et al [19].…”

Application of the Final DSM-5 Criteria for Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Before the final version of DSM-5 was released in May 2013, several investigations with the proposed draft had been done [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. These preliminary studies showed that a considerable percentage (8.8%~53.8%) of children with PDDs diagnoses did not meet the new criterion of ASD.…”

“…The results made families anxious whether their affected children not meeting the new criteria might therefore lose necessary services. Therefore, a relaxed rule for ASD was argued for [2,7,8,11]. In the draft, whereas the strict rule which requires all three factors of the SC dimension and two out of four factors of the RRB dimension was employed, several researchers have proposed original relaxed rules.…”