Interventions for preschool children with autism typically require professionals and parents to identify which social and language skills the individual child shows deficits in. Many assessment tools aimed at identifying such deficits exist, but they often require extensive training to use. The present study investigated the potential usefulness for said assessment purposes of the Norwegian assessment tool, TRAS – “Tidig Registrering Av Språkutveckling” (i.e. Nordic acronym for assessment of early language development), which can be used by preschool teachers without any specific training. Participants were 54 children with ASD, aged 2–5 years, enrolled in a behavioral intervention program. Participants were scored using TRAS at three time points during treatment to investigate TRAS’ sensitivity for detecting change. Only participants who had TRAS scores registered at all three time points were used for this analysis (n = 27). At intake, children were also scored using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, the results of which was then compared to TRAS scores. Results showed that TRAS scores increased significantly across time points, indicating that the tool is sensitive to treatment effects. TRAS scores also correlated significantly with Vineland communication subscale (n = 50), indicating that the measure can be used to measure language abilities in children with ASD. We conclude that TRAS is a potential alternative to more comprehensive language assessment tools for children with ASD.

中文翻译：

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TRAS：ASD 儿童语言评估工具的有效性和敏感性

对患有自闭症的学龄前儿童的干预通常需要专业人士和家长来确定个别孩子在哪些社交和语言技能方面存在缺陷。存在许多旨在识别此类缺陷的评估工具，但它们通常需要进行广泛的培训才能使用。本研究调查了挪威评估工具 TRAS –“Tidig Registrering Av Språkutveckling”（即北欧早期语言发展评估的首字母缩写词）对上述评估目的的潜在有用性，该工具可供学龄前教师使用，无需任何特定培训。参与者是 54 名年龄在 2-5 岁之间的 ASD 儿童，他们参加了行为干预计划。参与者在治疗期间的三个时间点使用 TRAS 进行评分，以研究 TRAS 检测变化的敏感性。n  = 27）。在入学时，还使用 ​​Vineland 适应性行为量表对儿童进行评分，然后将其结果与 TRAS 分数进行比较。结果显示，TRAS 分数在不同时间点显着增加，表明该工具对治疗效果敏感。TRAS 分数还与 Vineland 交流分量表 ( n  = 50)显着相关，表明该测量可用于测量 ASD 儿童的语言能力。我们得出结论，TRAS 是 ASD 儿童更全面的语言评估工具的潜在替代品。