Identification of infants with autism at their first birthday through retrospective use of FYI

Background:

Recent research (Watson et al., 2007) indicate the First Year Inventory (Reznick, Baranek et al., 2006) as a tool to identify one-year-olds at risk for autism and to describe children diagnosed with autism at their first birthday.

Objectives:

To examine the construct validity of the FYI-Retrospective form in a population of Italian preschoolers with autism.

Methods:

FYI was administered to parents of 50 preschoolers with ASD referred to the IRCCS Stella Maris for a comprehensive evaluation. Children’s diagnoses were confirmed with Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-G). Standard scores from MacArthur Communication Development Inventory and Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised (Leiter-R) were used to investigate language and cognitive levels. Parents (mother when possible) also completed the Early Development Questionnaire (EDQ; Ozonoff, 2005) to evaluate the presence of regression.

Results:

Preliminary analyses show: 1) higher risk scores in Social-communication domain (particularly in Social orienting and receptive communication; Imitation and Expressive communication) compared to the scores in Sensory-regulatory domain; 2) children with reported regression after 12 months of age have lower scores at the FYI; 3) a proportion of children obtained total risk scores under threshold of the cutoff; 4) some correlation of the FYI with cognitive and language impairments were found.

Conclusions:

FYI is as a useful tool to investigate early autism in its different form of onset and to better understand regressive form of autism.