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Assessing intelligence at autism diagnosis: mission impossible? Testability and cognitive profile of autistic preschoolers

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Abstract

Intelligence in minimally verbal children on the autism spectrum (AS) is at risk of being underestimated. The present study investigated testability and cognitive profile of preschool autistic children using conventional tools and strength-informed tools. Fifty-two AS children and fifty-four typical children matched on age (31–77 months) were assessed. Testability increased with age in both groups, was generally lower in AS children, but not related to their test performance. Typical children performed significantly better than AS children on conventional tools, but performance of both groups was similar on strength-informed tools. Differences of performance across tests were much greater in the AS group. These results emphasize the heterogenous, yet characteristic, cognitive profile in preschool children, and introduce the usefulness of flexible testing.

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Notes

  1. We use the respectful terms “autistic” children and “autism spectrum” children as it is currently the preferred language to refer to autism in the opinion of autistic people and their relatives (Kenny et al. 2016) and as using person first language can lead to unhelpful biases (Gernsbacher 2017).

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the participants and their families for their time as well as he HRDP research team who worked on this project. We are also grateful to Laurent Mottron for his comments and suggestions for this manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by CIHR Project Grant (149036) and FRQS junior career award to I.S.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Autism Research Group, CIUSSS du Nord-de-l’ïle-de-Montréal, 7070 boulevard Perras, Montreal, QC, H1E 1A4, Canada

    Valérie Courchesne, Dominique Girard, Claudine Jacques & Isabelle Soulières

  2. Psychology Department, Université du Québec à Montréal, C.P. 8888 succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, H3C 3P8, Canada

    Dominique Girard & Isabelle Soulières

  3. Psychoeducation and Psychology Department, Université du Québec en Outaouais, succursale Hull, C.P. 1250, Gatineau, J8X 3X7, Canada

    Claudine Jacques

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  1. Valérie Courchesne
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  3. Claudine Jacques
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  4. Isabelle Soulières
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Contributions

VC participated in the conception of the study, participated in its design and coordination and participated in the interpretation of the data, performed the statistical analysis and drafted the manuscript and included revisions from the other authors in the manuscript; DG participated in the design and interpretation of the data and helped with statistical analysis; CJ participated in the conception of the study, participated in the study design and coordination and interpretation of the data and reviewed the manuscript. IS participated in the conception of the study, participated in the study design and coordination and helped with the data analysis and interpretation. She also reviewed the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Isabelle Soulières.

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Conflict of interests

VC declares that she has no conflict of interest; CJ declares that she has no conflict of interest; DG declares that she has no conflict of interest IS declares that she has no conflict of interest.

Ethical Standards

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Courchesne, V., Girard, D., Jacques, C. et al. Assessing intelligence at autism diagnosis: mission impossible? Testability and cognitive profile of autistic preschoolers. J Autism Dev Disord 49, 845–856 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3786-4

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