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Network Structure of Autism Spectrum Disorder Behaviors and Its Evolution in Preschool Children: Insights from a New Longitudinal Network Analysis Method

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Abstract

Network modeling of the social, communication and restrictive/repetitive behaviors (RRBs) included in the definition of Autism Spectrum Disorder was performed. The Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) assessed behaviors in 139 pre-school cases at two cross-sections that averaged 34.8 months apart. Cross-sectional networks were based on the correlation matrix of the ADI-R behavioral items and the “bootCross” method was developed and enabled the estimation of a longitudinal network. At both stages, RRB items/nodes formed a consistent peripheral cluster, while social and communication nodes formed a core cluster that diverged with time. These differences in the nature and evolution of the RRB and socio-communicative dimensions indicate that their inter-behavior dynamics are very different. The most central behaviors across stages are proposed as prime targets for efficient therapeutic intervention.

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Notes

  1. RMSEA is a measure of absolute fit that assesses the discrepancy related to approximation in the population, and corrected for model complexity through the division by the degrees of freedom. CFI and TLI measure incremental fit that assess how much the specified model is superior to an alternative “baseline” model in reproducing the observed covariance matrix. The baseline model is usually a null model of uncorrelated variables.

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Acknowledgments

We specially thank families and individuals included in the study, and the authorized personnel at the Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Center at the University of Nijmegen for providing the DIANE dataset.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. JKB was supported by the European Union Horizon2020 grant CANDY (No. 847818).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, 230 S. Frontage Rd, New Haven, CT, USA

    Farhad Montazeri & George M. Anderson

  2. Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboudumc, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Jan K. Buitelaar

  3. Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry University Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Jan K. Buitelaar & Iris J. Oosterling

  4. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Lübeckweg 2, NL-9723 HE, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Annelies de Bildt

  5. Accare, Child Study Center, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Annelies de Bildt

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  1. Farhad Montazeri
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  4. Annelies de Bildt
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Contributions

FM and GMA conceived the project. FM performed the data analysis and wrote the paper. FM and GMA revised the paper. AdB and IJO provided the DIANE database. AdB, JKB and IJO offered advice on revision of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Farhad Montazeri.

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Conflict of interest

JKB has been in the past three years a consultant to/member of advisory board of/and/or speaker for Takeda/Shire, Roche, Medice, Angelini, Janssen, and Servier. He is not an employee of any of these companies, and not a stock shareholder of any of these companies. He has no other financial or material support, including expert testimony, patents, royalties. AdB is author on the Dutch ADOS and ADI-R manuals for which Accare receives remuneration. FM, IO and GMA report no apparent or real conflicts of interest.

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The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.

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Montazeri, F., Buitelaar, J.K., Oosterling, I.J. et al. Network Structure of Autism Spectrum Disorder Behaviors and Its Evolution in Preschool Children: Insights from a New Longitudinal Network Analysis Method. J Autism Dev Disord 53, 4293–4307 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05723-8

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