The eight-factor diagnostic model of prognostic indicators of autism in 5-6 year old children | Sibirskiy Psikhologicheskiy Zhurnal – Siberian Journal of Psychology. 2025. № 97. DOI: 10.17223/17267080/97/9

The eight-factor diagnostic model of prognostic indicators of autism in 5-6 year old children

Autism is defined as a complex neuropsychiatric disorder with a variety of individually specific difficulties in communicative, behavioral and emotional domains. The number of children with this form of dysontogenesis is steadily growing all over the world, which enhances scientific and practical interests in the differential diagnosis of autism manifestations progressing from an early age against the background of increased social interaction with others. The study, which has been ongoing for more than five years, developed and applied the "Autism Marker Questionnaire," which in this study consists of 330 potential risk signs for developing progressive autism spectrum disorder. The group of examined (N = 504) included 5-6 year old children: with normal development (N = 78), autism (N = 374) and developmental delay (N = 52). The gender differences of the children: 354 boys and 52 girls. In the process of symptomatic structure of polymorphic autistic disorder modeling, intergroup confirmatory factor analysis and other methods of mathematical and statistical analysis were used. Hypotheses about the structure of the relationship of factors, its invariance for different parts of the sample (by gender and age), and the influence of age and gender on it were tested. Testing of the diagnostic value of autistic disorder factors in 5-6 year olds showed high validity of three secondary factors: communication disorders, sensory disintegration and praxis violation (disinhibition, impaired motor skills). In general, the identified 8 factors of autism diagnostic model predictive indicators form reliable online screening scales for assessing the risk of autism in older preschool children. Logistic regression confirmed a fairly high predictive accuracy of the 8-factor model (88.5%).

Download file

Counter downloads: 145

Keywords

childhood autism, autism spectrum disorder, autism symptoms, dysontogenesis in autism, differential diagnosis, factor model, prognostic indicators

Authors

Name	Organization	E-mail
Nasledov Andrey D.	Saint Petersburg State University	a.nasledov@spbu.ru
Tkacheva Liubov O.	Saint Petersburg State University	l.tkacheva@spbu.ru
Zashchirinskaia Oksana V.	Saint Petersburg State University; Dostoevsky Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy; Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia	zaoks@mail.ru
Miroshnikov Sergey A.	Saint Petersburg State University; Longitude LLC	sergeyamir@gmail.com

Всего: 4

References

Наследов, А. Д., Ткачева, Л. О., Мирошников, С. А. (2023). Факторная структура и измерительная эквивалентность шкалы аутизма для детей 3-4 лет: анализ бинарных данных. Психология. Журнал Высшей школы экономики, 20(2), 191-210. doi: 10.17323/1813-8918-2023-2-191-210.

Наследов, А. Д, Мирошников, С. А., Ткачева, Л. О., Защиринская, О. В., Ульд Семета, М. Б. (2023). Психодиагностика риска расстройств аутистического спектра у детей 3-4лет. М.: Мир науки. URL: https://izd-mn.com/PDF/01MNNPM23.pdf.

American Psychiatric Association. (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Publishing.

Boer, D., Hanke, K., & He, J. (2018). On Detecting Systematic Measurement Error in Cross Cultural Research: A Review and Critical Reflection on Equivalence and Invariance Tests. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49, 713-734. doi: 10.1177/0022022117749042.

Byrne, B. M. (2010). Structural equation modeling with AMOS: Basic concepts, applications, and programming (2nd ed.). Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780203805534.

Chen, F. F. (2007). Sensitivity of goodness of fit indexes to lack of measurement invariance. Structural Equation Modeling, 14(3), 464-504. doi: 10.1080/10705510701301834.

Constantino, J. N., & Charman, T. (2016). Diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder: reconciling the syndrome, its diverse origins, and variation in expression. Lancet Neurology, 15(3), 279-91. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(15)00151-9.

Cook, R., Brewer, R, Shah, P., & Bird, G. (2013). Alexithymia, not autism, predicts poor recognition of emotional facial expressions. Psychological Science, 24(5), 723-32. doi: 10.1177/0956797612463582.

Decety, J., & Yoder, K. J. (2016). Empathy and motivation for justice: Cognitive empathy and concern, but not emotional empathy, predict sensitivity to injustice for others. Social Neuroscience, 11(1), 1-14. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2015.1029593.

Dellapiazza, F., Michelon, C., Rattaz, C., Picot, M. C., & Baghdadli, A. (2022). Sex-related differences in clinical characteristics of children with ASD without ID: Results from the ELENA cohort. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15:998195. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.998195.

Fletcher-Watson, S., & Bird, G. (2020). Autism and empathy: What are the real links? Autism, 24(1), 3-6. doi: 10.1177/1362361319883506.

Gehdu, B. K., Tsantani, M., Press, C., Gray, K. L., & Cook, R. (2023). Recognition of facial expressions in autism: Effects of face masks and alexithymia. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76(12), 2854-64. doi: 10.1177/17470218231163007.

Guo, X., Shakarchi, A. F., Block, S. S., Friedman, D. S., Repka, M. X., & Collins, M. E. (2022). Noncycloplegic Compared with Cycloplegic Refraction in a Chicago School-Aged Population. Ophthalmology, 129(7), 813-820. doi: 10.1016/j.ophtha.2022.02.027.

Kline, R. B. (2011). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. Guilford.

Lim, M., Carollo, A., Dimitriou, D., & Esposito G. (2022). Recent Developments in Autism Genetic Research: A Scientometric Review from 2018 to 2022. Genes (Basel), 13(9), 1646. doi: 10.3390/genes13091646.

Mottron, L. (2021). A Radical Change in Our Autism Research Strategy Is Needed: Back to Prototypes. Autism Research, 14(10), 2213-2220. doi: 10.1002/aur.2494.

Mundy, P. (2018). Review of Joint Attention and Social Cognitive Brain systems Mundy-2018-European Journal of Neuroscience. European Journal of Neuroscience, 47(6), 497514. doi: 10.1111/ejn.13720.

Mundy, P., & Bullen, J. (2022). The Bidirectional Social-Cognitive Mechanisms of the Social-Attention Symptoms of Autism. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 752274. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.752274.

Nasledov, A. D., Tkacheva, L. O., Zashchirinskaya, O. V., & Miroshnikov, S. A. (2023). Analysis of a Four-Factor Model of Autism Symptoms in Children Aged 3-6 Years Old. Clinical Psychology and Special Education, 12(4), 47-72. doi: 10.17759/cpse.2023120403.

Nasledov, A., Miroshnikov, S., Tkacheva, L., et al. (2021). Application of psychometric approach for ASD evaluation in Russian 3-4-year-olds. Mathematics, 14(9), 1608. doi: 10.3390/math9141608.

Rieffe, C., O'Connor, R., Bulow A., et al. (2021). Quantity and quality of empathic responding by autistic and non-autistic adolescent girls and boys. Autism, 25(1), 199-209. doi: 10.1177/1362361320956422.

Riglin, L., Wootton, R. E., Thapar, A. K., Livingston, L. A., Langley, K., et al. (2021). Variable Emergence of Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms From Childhood to Early Adulthood. American Journal of Psychiatry, 178(8), 752-760. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20071119.

Rosello, O. M., Castello, A. R., Alfonso, E. F. S, Angel, M. J. R, et al. (2020). Extraction of beta-blockers from urine with apolymeric monolith modified with 1-allyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride in spincolumn format. Talanta, 214, 120860. doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2020.120860.

Santiesteban, I., Gibbard, C., Drucks, H., et al. (2021). Individuals with Autism Share Others’ Emotions: Evidence from the Continuous Affective Rating and Empathic Responses (CARER) Task. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 51(2), 391-404. doi: 10.1007/s10803-020-04535-y.

Sifneos, P. E. (1973). The prevalence of alexithymic characteristics in psychosomatic patients. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 22(2), 255-62. doi: 10.1159/000286529.

Tanner, A., & Dounavi, K. (2021). The emergence of autism symptoms prior to 18 months of age: A systematic literature review. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 51(3), 973-993. doi: 10.1007/s10803-020-04618-w.

Waizbard-Bartov, E., & Miller, M. (2023). Does the severity of autism symptoms change over time? A review of the evidence, impacts, and gaps in current knowledge. Clinical Psychology Review, 99, 102230. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2022.102230.

Wang, L., Feng, J., Zhang, Y., & Wang, T. (2022). Effect of the Early Start Denver Model on Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Syndrome of Different Traditional Chinese Medicine Types in Northeast China. Frontiers in Pediatrics, 10:851109. doi: 10.3389/fped.2022.851109.

Warner, V., Zhang X., Reed P., Havdahl A., et al. (2022). Genetic correlates of phenotypic heterogeneity in autism. Nature Genetics, 54(9), 1293-1304. doi: 10.1038/s41588-022-01072-5.

Winter, A. S., Fountain, C., Cheslack-Postava, K., & Bearman, P. S. (2020). The social patterning of autism diagnoses reversed in California between 1992 and 2018. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(48), 30295302. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2015762117.

Zhu, Y., Mu, W., Chirica, M. G., & Berenbaum, H. (2022). Testing a theory-driven factor structure of the autism-spectrum quotient. Autism Research, 15(9), 1710-1718. doi: 10.1002/aur.2763.