Brief report: application of the TEACCH program on Chinese pre-school children with autism--Does culture make a difference?

A longitudinal study was conducted on 34 children with autism to evaluate the usefulness of the Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication Handicapped Children (TEACCH) program for Chinese pre-school children in Hong Kong. Eighteen children received full-time center-based TEACCH program training. The control group included 16 children who received different types of individualized or group training but not TEACCH program training. Instruments validated in Hong Kong were used to assess the children's cognitive, social adaptive functioning and developmental abilities before and during the training at 6-month intervals for 12 months. Children in the experimental group showed better outcomes at posttest. They also showed progress in different developmental domains over time. The study provided initial support for the effectiveness of using the TEACCH program with Chinese children.

Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Psycho-educational Profile-Revised (CPEP-R).

The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Psycho-educational Profile-Revised (PEP-R). The Chinese PEP-R (CPEP-R) was administered to 63 preschool children with symptoms of autistic disorder recruited from special child-care centers in Hong Kong. Results showed that the scales of the CPEP-R were internally consistent, reliable across raters and temporally stable. Regarding the concurrent validity of the CPEP-R, the developmental score and developmental age assessed by the CPEP-R were significantly correlated with the Merrill-Palmer Scale of Mental Tests and the Hong Kong Based Adaptive Behavior Scale. The Behavioral Scale of the CPEP-R was also significantly related to the Childhood Autism Rating Scale. Besides replicating the findings in the Western context, the present study suggests that the psychometric properties of the PEP-R are stable across cultures and the related findings support the cross-cultural reliability of the tool.