Management thinker Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”.
Autism is one of the most complex neurological disorder. Many co-occurring conditions along with autism, makes the situation more complex. In order to provide right interventions with medicines, therapies or other rehabilitation procedures, it is critical to get a good understanding of severity of different conditions. Specialist doctors and psychologists have to use different measurement mechanisms to measure different aspects of autism and other co-occurring conditions. In today’s poster I am touching upon some of the predominantly used measurement mechanisms.
Autism-spectrum Quotient (AQ) is a questionnaire published in 2001 by Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, UK. Consisting of fifty questions, it aims to investigate whether adults of average intelligence have symptoms of autism spectrum conditions.
Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) is a tool used to identify children aged 2 years and older with autism. The CARS was designed to help differentiate children with autism from those with other developmental delays, such as intellectual disability (formerly called Mental Retardation).
Gilliam Autism Rating Scale is a norm-referenced instrument that assists teachers and clinicians in identifying and diagnosing autism in individuals aged 3 years to 22 years and in estimating the severity of the child's disorder.
Stanford-Binet intelligence scale (IQ) is a standardised test that assesses intelligence and cognitive abilities in children, beginning at age two, and in adults.
Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) is a 65-item rating scale that measures the severity of autism spectrum symptoms as they occur in natural social settings. SRS Identifies the presence and severity of social impairment within the autism spectrum and differentiates it from that which occurs in other disorders.
Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) is a structured interview used for diagnosing autism, planning treatment, and distinguishing autism from other developmental disorders. The interview can be used to assess both children and adults, as long as their mental age is above 2.0 years.
Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) is an instrument for diagnosing and assessing autism. The protocol consists of a series of structured and semi-structured tasks that involve social interaction between the examiner and the person under assessment.
As a parent I was not sure, whether any of these tests were done for Pratibha. Yes, we were part of her first assessment by a developmental paediatrician in Chennai. At the end we got a 3 page long report by the doctor describing her conditions. No specific label such as “autism” was assigned to her. The disability certificates that we get from designated Govt hospital in Mumbai, mentions only the label “Mental Retardation”. From the age of 12, we used to take her IQ (I think using the Stanford-Binet scale) every alternate year, to check changes in her intellectual functions.
The idea of this poster is to make people aware on different mechanisms / scales used to measure autism and associated conditions. All these measurements are to be taken by qualified psychologists. If you cannot measure it, you can’t improve it. So measurement of parameters associated with autism is critical, for coming up with improvement plans to manage autism.
Concluding this post with a quote “Autism is about having a pure heart and being very sensitive. It is about finding a way to survive in an overwhelming, confusing world . . . It is about developing differently, in a different pace and with different leaps”, by Trisha Van Berkel
I am reading your post from the beginning, it was so interesting to read & I feel thanks to you for posting such a good blog, keep updates regularly.
ReplyDeleteEmail Marketing