The recognition significance of pointing gestures in children with autism spectrum disorder and its relationship with functional development / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To understand the identification value of pointing gestures in children with autism spectrum disorder(ASD) and its relationship with functional development.Methods:From December 2020 to November 2021, 1 099 children from Children’s Health Care Center of Beijing Children’s Hospital were tested by pointing gestures test, including 942 ASD children and 157 typical developed children.And the data of children's neuropsychological development scale from 800 children aged 1.0-5.9 were collected.SPSS 20.0 was used for statistical analysis. Trend test was used to analyze the distribution of pointing gestures test sensitivity in autistic children, and ANOVA was used to analyze the relationship between pointing gestures test scores and functional development fields.Results:The sensitivity of pointing gestures was 83.5% in children aged 1.0-10.0 years, 76.3%-93.1% in children aged 1.0-4.9 years, and 93.1%-95.1% in children aged 1.0-2.9.With the increase of age, the sensitivity of pointing gestures in autistic children (linear-by-linear association =164.889, P<0.001) and the Yoden index had a decreasing trend. The positive predictive value (91.53%-100.00%) and negative predictive value (75.36%-91.84%) were found in the children aged 1.0-10.0 years.The sensitivity of pointing gestures test was 44.9% in children with mild autism aged 1.0-10.0 years and 46.5%-65.9% in children with mild autism aged from 1.0-3.9 years. The sensitivity of pointing gestures test was 81.5% in children with moderate autism aged from 1.0-10.0 years and 87.3%-97.8% in children with moderate autism aged 1.0-3.9 years. The sensitivity of the pointing gestures test was 97.2% in children with severe autism aged 1.0-10.0 years, and 100.0% in children with severe autism aged 1.0-3.9 years. The sensitivity of the pointing gestures in mild, moderate and severe autism children decreased with age (linear-by-linear association values were 16.725, 64.232, 66.732 respectively, all P<0.001). The children with severe autism mainly scored 2 points (80.3%, 419/522) on the pointing gestures test , and children with moderate autism mainly scored 1 point(64.2%, 170/265) on the pointing gestures test. There were significant differences in functional development among different pointing gestures test groups.Functional development score in the autism children with 0 score of pointing gestures test was significantly higher than those with 1 score and 2 scores of pointing gestures test (all P<0.05). Conclusion:Pointing gestures has good sensitivity in children with autism (especially 1.0-4.9 years of age), and may serve as an objectively observable screening method. The better children with autism score on the pointing gestures, the better their functional development.