Relationships Between Household Income and Functional Independent Behavior for Children With Autism

Abstract

Children in lower income households are less likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and diagnosis is often delayed. Lack of or delayed identification of ASD minimizes a child’s ability to receive effective early intervention services that support development of functional independence skills. Research has yet to identify relationships between functional independence and household income for children with ASD. A cross-sectional national survey with 231 caregivers of children with autism aged 2–12 years was conducted. Caregivers completed a 90-min survey examining family demographics, intervention services, autism symptom severity, and children’s functional behavioral outcomes. Significant differences in functional independence behavior scores were identified for children from the highest and lowest income categories when controlling for autism symptom severity, age of diagnosis, and receipt of intervention services. This study provides preliminary evidence to support the association between income and functional independent behavior for children with ASD.

Evaluation of clinical assessments of social abilities for use in autism clinical trials by the autism biomarkers consortium for clinical trials

“…Our results also replicate recent work demonstrating race related differences in Vineland Communication scores (Fombonne & Zuckerman, 2022) but not in other aspects of social functioning. Finally, similar to recent reports (St. John & Ausderau, 2021), we found that families with lower household income reported lower social communication skills across some scales of the Vineland, SRS, and PDDBI, whereas ADI, Vineland, AIM, and PDBBI scores differed by parental education. Given these patterns of non-equivalence, including some replicated elsewhere, it is important to recognize that characterization of ASD social behaviors may be influenced by the sample composition with respect to child and family factors.…”

Dental Treatment Characteristics of Autistic Children and Differences in Dental Procedures under General Anesthesia Relative to Healthy Counterparts

“…A noted rise in positive behavior of children from a middle economic level resulted in the loss of this significant difference. In this context, John and Ausderau [ 26 ] noted that children from higher economic levels had increased functional independence behavior compared with those from lower levels. This perhaps explains the noted association.…”

Trajectories of adaptive functioning from early childhood to adolescence in autism: Identifying turning points and key correlates of chronogeneity

“…Previous research has documented links between family demographics (e.g., household income, parent education, ethnic background, and immigrant status) and early identification and diagnosis of autism (Daniels & Mandell, 2014;Thomas et al, 2012), access to and utilization of services (Khanlou et al, 2017;Lim et al, 2021;Pickard & Ingersoll, 2016;Smith et al, 2020), as well as educational placement (Gindi, 2020;Kurth et al, 2016). outcomes (Aishworiya et al, 2021;Hodge et al, 2021;St. John & Ausderau, 2021).…”

“…Previous research has documented links between family demographics (e.g., household income, parent education, ethnic background, and immigrant status) and early identification and diagnosis of autism (Daniels & Mandell, 2014 ; Thomas et al., 2012 ), access to and utilization of services (Khanlou et al., 2017 ; Lim et al., 2021 ; Pickard & Ingersoll, 2016 ; Smith et al., 2020 ), as well as educational placement (Gindi, 2020 ; Kurth et al., 2016 ). These factors may further influence Autistic children's adaptive outcomes (Aishworiya et al., 2021 ; Hodge et al., 2021 ; St. John & Ausderau, 2021 ). It is considered important to account for multiple demographic indicators when studying behavioral manifestation of autism to mitigate their confounding effects on the primary factors of interest (Durkin et al., 2017 ; Rai et al., 2012 ).…”