Northwestern University, USA.
Autism. 2019 May;23(4):971-979. doi: 10.1177/1362361318792872. Epub 2018 Aug 16.
Borrowing from a clinical psychology observational methodology, thin-slice observations were used to assess autism characteristics in toddlers. Thin-slices are short observations taken from a longer behavior stream which are assigned ratings by multiple raters using a 5-point scale. The raters' observations are averaged together to assign a "thin-slice" value for each observation. In this study, a total of 60 toddlers were selected from a video archive: 20 children with typical development, 20 children with developmental language disorder, and 20 children with autism. In the first part of this study, 20 raters observed small play segments between toddlers and an assessor. Raters assigned scores to each of the 60 toddlers on items related to autism symptomatology. Item analysis and generalizability and decision studies were conducted to determine the factor structure and optimal number of raters to achieve a stable estimate of autism characteristics. In the second part of the study, generalizability and decision studies were conducted to determine the most efficient and optimal combination of raters and naturalistic contexts. This pilot study provides recommendations for optimizing the utility of thin-slice observations for measuring autism symptomatology in young children.
借鉴临床心理学观察方法，采用薄片观察来评估幼儿的自闭症特征。薄片观察是从较长的行为流中提取的短时间观察，由多个评分者使用 5 点量表进行评分。评分者的观察结果进行平均，为每个观察分配一个“薄片”值。在这项研究中，从视频档案中总共选择了 60 名幼儿：20 名发育正常的儿童、20 名发育性语言障碍儿童和 20 名自闭症儿童。在这项研究的第一部分，20 名评分者观察了幼儿与评估者之间的小片段游戏。评分者根据与自闭症症状相关的项目对 60 名幼儿进行评分。进行项目分析、可推广性和决策研究，以确定因素结构和最佳评分者数量，以实现自闭症特征的稳定估计。在研究的第二部分，进行了可推广性和决策研究，以确定评分者和自然情境的最有效和最佳组合。这项初步研究为优化薄片观察在测量幼儿自闭症症状方面的效用提供了建议。
