Application of the Children Neuropsychological and Behavioral Scale-Revision 2016 in young children with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract:

Objective To compare the assessment results of the Children Neuropsychological and Behavioral Scale-Revision 2016 (CNBS-R2016) between young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and global developmental delay (GDD, without ASD) and to explore whether CNBS-R2016 could be helpful to early identification of ASD. Methods A total of 260 ASD and 371 GDD children aged 18-30 months were enrolled to finish the assessment of CNBS-R2016. The development quotients (DQs) of the five domains of CNBS-R2016 including gross motor, fine motor, adaptability, language and social behavior were compared between the two groups. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the value of the autism-predicted domain in identifying ASD and GDD. Results The DQs of all the five domains in the ASD group were lower than those in the GDD group (P < 0.05). The language DQ and total DQ of the ASD group had a negative correlation with the score of the autism-predicted domain (r_s=-0.566, -0.552 respectively, P < 0.01). When the cut-off value of the autism-predicted domain was 10.5, the largest area under the ROC curve was 0.835, and the sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of ASD were 0.750 and 0.798 respectively. Conclusions The development of ASD children aged 18-30 months is worse than that of GDD children. CNBS-R2016 may be helpful to distinguish ASD from children with developmental delay.