Efficacy of Children Neuropsychological and Behavioral Scale in Screening for Autism Spectrum Disorders through a Combination of Developmental Surveillance

Abstract

Objective

This study aimed to explore the clinical value of Children Neuropsychological and Behavioral Scale-Revision 2016 (CNBS-R2016) for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) screening in the presence of developmental surveillance.

Methods

All participants were evaluated by the CNBS-R2016 and Gesell Developmental Schedules (GDS). Spearman’s correlation coefficients and Kappa values were obtained. Taking GDS as a reference assessment, the performance of the CNBS-R2016 for detecting the developmental delays of children with ASD was analyzed with receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The efficacy of the CNBS-R2016 to screen for ASD was explored by comparing Communication Warning Behavior with Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition (ADOS-2).

Results

In total, 150 children aged 12–42 months with ASD were enrolled. The developmental quotients of the CNBS-R2016 were correlated with those of the GDS (r=0.62–0.94). The CNBS-R2016 and GDS had good diagnostic agreement for developmental delays (Kappa=0.73–0.89), except for Fine Motor. There was a significant difference between the proportions of Fine Motor, delays detected by the CNBS-R2016 and GDS (86.0% vs. 77.3%). With GDS as a standard, the areas under the ROC curves of the CNBS-R2016 were above 0.95 for all the domains except Fine Motor, which was 0.70. In addition, the positive rate of ASD was 100.0% and 93.5% when the cut-off points of 7 and 12 in the Communication Warning Behavior subscale were used, respectively.

Conclusion

The CNBS-R2016 performed well in developmental assessment and screening for children with ASD, especially by Communication Warning Behaviors subscale. Therefore, the CNBS-R2016 is worthy of clinical application in children with ASD in China.

Keywords

autism spectrum disorder / Children Neuropsychological and Behavioral Scale / screening for autism spectrum disorder / developmental assessment

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