Parent Certainty and Consistency When Completing Vocabulary Checklists in Young Autistic Children

Abstract

Purpose: Using a novel parent report measure, this study investigated whether asking parents to rate their certainty when reporting on child vocabulary skills provided additional insight into parent report and emerging language abilities in young autistic children. Specifically, we investigated whether parent certainty varied based on whether the child was reported to understand, understand and say, or neither understand nor say the word and whether standardized measures of expressive and receptive language abilities and/or autistic traits predicted parent certainty. Lastly, we investigated whether certainty was associated with inconsistency in parent report of child word knowledge.

Method: Twenty-one parents and their autistic children ages 2-5 years participated. One parent per child completed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MCDI) Words and Gestures form and a custom vocabulary checklist including 24 object nouns from the MCDI. Within the custom form, parents indicated whether their child understood, understood and said, or neither understood nor said 24 target nouns and reported how certain they were about their responses using a 5-point scale. Expressive language, receptive language, and autistic traits were measured via direct assessment using standardized measures.

Results: Parent certainty varied widely and was higher for words the parents reported the children understood and said compared to that for words children either understood or neither understood nor said. Certainty ratings were higher when a child had higher standardized receptive and expressive language scores. Lastly, parent certainty was associated with reporting consistency, clarifying previous findings of inconsistencies in parent report of child vocabulary.

Conclusion: Findings from this study indicate that measuring parent certainty provides critical information when assessing early vocabulary skills in autistic children.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23671497.

Figure 1.

Mean parent certainty broken down by response type. Response was the parents' report of whether children understood, understood and said, or neither understood nor said each word on the custom vocabulary checklist. Certainty was each participant's mean rating of parent certainty calculated separately for each response type. Parent certainty was significantly higher for words the parents reported the children understood and said compared to that for words the children either understood or neither understood nor said.

Figure 2.

Associations between mean parent certainty and (A) receptive language, (B) expressive language, and (C) autistic traits. Parent certainty was indexed by the mean rating of parent certainty by participant across the 23 items on the custom vocabulary checklist. Expressive language and receptive language were indexed by the Preschool Language Scales–Fifth Edition Expressive Communication and Auditory Comprehension growth scale values, respectively (Zimmerman et al., 2011). Autistic traits were indexed by the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule–Second Edition calibrated severity scores (Gotham et al., 2009; Lord, Luyster, et al., 2012; Lord, Rutter, et al., 2012). Parent certainty was significantly associated with receptive and expressive language but not with autistic traits.

Figure 3.

The significant association between mean parent certainty and percent consistent. Parent certainty was the mean rating of parent certainty by participant across the 23 nouns on the custom vocabulary checklist. Percent consistent represented the number of items that parents reported consistently across the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory Words and Gestures form (Fenson et al., 2006) and the custom checklist, divided the total number of items, and multiplied by 100.