The Baby and Infant Screen for Children with aUtIsm Traits-Part 1: Age-based Scoring Procedures

As increasing interest and emphasis has been placed on early intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), the need for reliable and valid early assessment techniques has grown significantly. The Baby and Infant Screen for Children with aUtIsm Traits—Part 1 (BISCUIT-Part 1) is a measure designed to assess the core diagnostic features of infants and toddlers aged 17 to 37 months. While studies of the measure’s psychometric properties have been promising, the measure’s scoring procedures do not take the child’s age into account. Given the significant amount of development that occurs in the first 3 years of life, the current paper examined the utility of age-based scoring procedures for the BISCUIT-Part 1. The BISCUIT-Part 1 was shown to have good to excellent discriminating ability for each age group. As age increased, higher cutoff scores were needed to distinguish toddlers with Pervasive Developmental Disorder—Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) from those with atypical development. A different pattern emerged when distinguishing PDD-NOS from autism, with toddlers in the middle age cohort requiring the highest cutoffs. The implications of these results, as well as possible areas of future research, are discussed.