中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: Few screening tools exist that are specific for distinguishing autism spectrum disorders (ASD) from developmental delay (DD) in children under four years old. The availability of such a tool would reduce the difficulty of early diagnosis and aid early intervention for children with ASD. The current study applied the Clancy Behavior Scale, a parent-report questionnaire, to detect ASD in children under four. Methods: Parents of 152 children from 18 to 47 months old, including 62 children with ASD and 90 children with DD, completed the measure. Results: Analysis of the data indicated that the Clancy Behavior Scale is a promising screening tool. Using a signal detection procedure, a score of 12 was used as the cut-off to distinguish children with ASD from those with DD. The sensitivity and specificity were .74 and .73, respectively. Using a discriminant analysis structure matrix, we selected 9 of the 14 items of the Clancy Behavior Scale as critical items. Using a signal detection procedure again, a score of 7 was used as the cut-off for the 9 critical items to distinguish young children with ASD from those with DD. Both the sensitivity and specificity of short form were .76 and .76, respectively. The results supported the utility of applying the short form Clancy Behavior Scale to detect ASD in young children; both the sensitivity and specificity were better than with the 14-item measure. We suggest that the 9-item form be used to assess, and that 4 items be used for the initial screening. Conclusions: The current preliminary data demonstrated that the Clancy Behavior Scale can be used as a level-two screening tool for children under four with ASD. Future studies are needed to recruit a larger sample size and to validate the accuracy of using the Clancy Behavior Scale to diagnose and screen young children with ASD.