The Autistic Behavioural Indicators Instrument (ABII): Development and instrument utility in discriminating Autistic Disorder from speech and language impairment and typical development

Agreement Between a Brief Autism Observational Instrument and Established ASD Measures

“…Rather, the ABII is designed to inform the accuracy of referrals to facilitate earlier detection of children in need of further specialist diagnostic evaluation. This study provides further information on the psychometric properties of the ABII (Ward & Gilmore, 2010) by examining its classification efficiency of children diagnosed with DSM-IV-TR or DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for autism, establishing its correlation with existing instruments (ADOS and CARS2-ST) and comparing its agreement with diagnostic criteria (DSM-5), ADOS and the CARS2-ST in the classification of children with autism.…”

“…The ABII assesses the presence of behavioural markers with an early emergence within key ASD domains. The ABII is an 18 item non-verbal screening instrument that includes a fixed sequence of standardised and structured tasks that elicit specific target behaviours across social attention, sensory and behavioural domains (see Ward and Gilmore, 2010 for a review of instrument development). The social attention subscale (SAS) comprises tasks that measure social orienting (e.g., preferential gaze to social or non social stimuli), and joint attention behaviours (e.g., preferences for shared engagement with a caregiver or solitary play), and displays of affect across social and non-social stimuli.…”

“…A total ABII score of 11 or above is indicative of a "positive" screen. In an initial examination of the utility of the ABII in classifying children aged 2 to 6 years with a DSM-IV-TR diagnosis of Autistic Disorder, a speech and language impairment, and neurotypcial development (Ward & Gilmore, 2010), a cut-off score of 11 produced maximum sensitivity and specificity. Administration of the structured tasks on the ABII generally takes five to ten minutes, depending on the level of engagement and ability of the child.…”

“…A recently developed semi-structured brief observational instrument, the Autistic Behavioural Indicators Instrument (ABII; Ward & Gilmore, 2010), has shown preliminary utility in classifying children aged two to six years with and without Autistic Disorder (AD). In an initial examination of instrument classification efficiency, the ABII correctly classified all children with AD (n = 20) and produced no misclassification errors of children with typical development (n = 20) or speech and language impairment (n = 20).…”

Adaptation of the Child Development Clinical Risk Indicators instrument to retrospective parent report

“…The literature is vast and consensual when pointing out the deficits in social skills and in shared attention as strong early signs of ASD (16,27) . Thus, the studies corroborate the results obtained here by claiming that, in children with ASD, the lack of interest in social stimuli is characterized by reduced frequency of eye contact; these children having a preference for non-social stimuli, manifested by directing the gaze preferentially to objects and not to individuals, along with the lack of interest in sharing attention (16,(27)(28)(29) .…”