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Brief Report: Preliminary Feasibility of the TEDI: A Novel Parent-Administered Telehealth Assessment for Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms in the First Year of Life

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Abstract

Families with early concerns about infant symptoms of ASD have limited access to experienced professionals for screening and guidance. Telehealth has been used to reduce access disparities in other pediatric populations and has shown promise in parent-implemented interventions for ASD. We investigated the feasibility of a novel level-2 telehealth assessment of infants’ early social communication and ASD symptoms, the Telehealth Evaluation of Development for Infants (TEDI). Parents of eleven infants aged 6–12 months were coached to administer specific semi-structured behavioral probes. Initial feasibility, reliability, and acceptability benchmarks were met. These findings suggest the feasibility of screening infants via telehealth, and are supportive of further large-scale efforts to validate this method for longitudinal monitoring of symptomatic infants in community settings.

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported by funding from a Joe P. Tupin Research Award from the UC Davis Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences awarded to S.D. and by the MIND Institute IDDRC funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U54 HD079125). We are very grateful to the families who participated in this project, and to the assistance of Raechel Paterson and Maya Raj with data collection and coding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Davis MIND Institute, 2825 50th Street, Sacramento, CA, 95820, USA

    Meagan R. Talbott, Sarah Dufek & Sally J. Rogers

  2. Department of Pediatrics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Lonnie Zwaigenbaum

  3. Autism Research Centre, Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Lonnie Zwaigenbaum

  4. Dalhousie University/IWK Health Centre, Halifax, NS, Canada

    Susan Bryson & Isabel M. Smith

  5. Bloorview Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Jessica Brian

  6. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Jessica Brian

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  1. Meagan R. Talbott
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Correspondence to Meagan R. Talbott.

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Talbott, M.R., Dufek, S., Zwaigenbaum, L. et al. Brief Report: Preliminary Feasibility of the TEDI: A Novel Parent-Administered Telehealth Assessment for Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms in the First Year of Life. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 3432–3439 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-04314-4

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