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Abstract
Objective: To investigate the congruence and discrepancies between mother and father reports of early autism spectrum disorders (ASD) markers.
Methods: Mothers (n = 80) and fathers (n = 78) of 12-month-old infants (55% boys) completed the first year inventory (FYI), an ASD norm-referenced screening questionnaire. Mothers also completed the Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (ITSEA).
Results: There were significant and moderate intra-class correlations between mother and father reports for most FYI factors. Fathers’ median FYI social-communication domain score was almost twice that of mothers. Mann–Whitney tests indicated that fathers rated their child significantly higher than mothers on the four FYI social-communication factors and on the sensory processing factor. Linear weighted kappa analyses indicated poor agreement on gaze-related and reactivity FYI items. FYI social-communication and sensory-regulatory factors showed significant correlations with corresponding ITSEA scores.
Conclusions: Social-communication markers pose a greater challenge for consistent report across parents than sensory-regulatory markers.
Acknowledgements
We thank M. Cohen, R. Gal, T. Itzkovitz, K. Lubani-Huita, R. Samara, R. Shmeltzer, R. Uda-Jarais, O. Yonash and N. Yusuf-Alhuda, MA students at the University of Haifa who contributed to data collection and analysis.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.
This study has been supported by a European international reintegration grant (# 203715).