Identification of the most indicative and discriminative features from diagnostic instruments for children with autism.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Diagnosing autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is complex and time-consuming. The present work systematically examines the importance of items from the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) in discerning children with and without ASD. Knowledge of the most discriminative features and their underlying concepts may prove valuable for the future training tools that assist clinicians to substantiate or extenuate a suspicion of ASD in nonverbal and minimally verbal children.

Methods

In two samples of nonverbal (N = 466) and minimally verbal (N = 566) children with ASD (N = 509) and other mental disorders or developmental delays (N = 523), we applied random forests (RFs) to (i) the combinatio

SUBMITTER: Stroth S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10242833 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature