Toward culturally-appropriate communication assessment for Indigenous Australian children with autism

Abstract

We sought to determine if the Hearing and Talking Scale (HATS)—a tool developed to assess the communication, speech, and language development of Indigenous Australian children—might be applicable to Indigenous Australian children with autism. A HATS assessment was completed with four Indigenous Australian children. The children were aged 3–5 years and had been diagnosed with autism. The results were compared to scores from the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Scale (REEL-4), which is a standardised, norm-referenced assessment of expressive and receptive language development. The children’s early childhood teachers served as informants. Both the HATS and REEL-4 identified varying degrees of communication impairment suggesting that their combined use may represent a culturally appropriate and feasible communication assessment strategy. Future research into the reliability and validity of the HATS for assessing the communicative functioning of young Indigenous Australian children with autism or other types of developmental disabilities or delay is warranted.

Keywords:

• Autism
• culturally appropriate assessment
• communication assessment
• Indigenous Australian children
• intellectual disabilities

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which the reported work was conducted and pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging. Appreciation is extended to Olga Camacho Duarte, the participating teachers, and Professor Michael Donovan (Gumbaynggir mob).

Disclosure statement

The second author’s participation was supported by a Macquarie University Research Internship funded by the Australian Government’s Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Meet face-to-face from any device | Zoom.