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The current study used a transdiagnostic approach to explore experiences of consumers and professionals on how the process of assessing and diagnosing neurodevelopmental conditions can be improved.
In the Australian disability context, the assessment of children with neurodevelopmental conditions’ functioning (across all domains) is of increasing importance, particularly since the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Currently, there is wide variability across assessment of functioning practices, including the choice and use of published tools for assessment.
The aim of the present study was to compare scale and conditional reliability derived from item response theory analyses among the most commonly used, as well as several newly developed, observation, interview, and parent-report autism instruments.
Five The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers working across diverse and highly impactful areas of child health research have been named as finalists for the 2023 Premier’s Science Awards.
Harmonizing the scores obtained by different instruments that measure the same construct enable researchers to combine them in one analysis. An important step in harmonization is checking whether there is measurement invariance across populations.
Links between temperament and social-emotional difficulties are well-established in normative child development but remain poorly characterized in autism. We sought to characterize distinct temperament subgroups and their associations with concurrent internalizing and externalizing symptoms in a sample of 103 infants showing early signs of autism.
Economic preferences may be shaped by exposure to sex hormones around birth. Prior studies of economic preferences and numerous other phenotypic characteristics use digit ratios (2D : 4D), a purported proxy for prenatal testosterone exposure, whose validity has recently been questioned. We use direct measures of neonatal sex hormones (testosterone and oestrogen), measured from umbilical cord blood (n = 200) to investigate their association with later-life economic preferences (risk preferences, competitiveness, time preferences and social preferences) in an Australian cohort (Raine Study Gen2).
Little is known about parent preferences regarding delivery methods of early interventions. This research examined, through parent report, the current and preferred delivery methods of seven common educational early interventions accessed by New Zealand children with autism spectrum disorder.
Caregiver-mediated supports in general have shown mixed evidence for enhancing language outcomes in infants at higher likelihood of autism. While caregivers play a substantial role in caregiver-mediated supports, little is known about whether caregivers' own subclinical autistic features - known as broader autism phenotype - may moderate infant language outcomes.
Eye-tracking could expedite autism identification/diagnosis through standardisation and objectivity. We tested whether Gazefinder autism assessment, with Classification Algorithm derived from gaze fixation durations, would have good accuracy (area under the curve [AUC] ≥ 0.80) to differentiate 2-4-year-old autistic from non-autistic children.