Children can be reliably diagnosed with autism as early as 3 years of age, and early interventions are initiated. There is often a significant gap between the age of onset of symptoms (2-3 years) and diagnosis (8-10 years) in Africa. We conducted a study to validate the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) as a screening instrument in a rural…

The assessment instruments for diagnosing children with autism spectrum disorder have been developed mostly in affluent, English-speaking countries. Among the most popular has been the Autism Diagnostic Interview--Revised. This article reports its use in Iran with the dual aims of confirming the factor structure of the revised Autism Diagnostic…

Basic motor competencies (in German: Motorische Basiskompetenzen; MOBAK) are performance dispositions empowering children to participate in the movement culture. For the diagnosis of basic motor competencies, a test instrument consisting of 15 test items for assessing third graders' basic motor competencies was developed (MOBAK-LUX-3) and…

The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children (PANAS-C) is a 27-item youth-report measure of positive affectivity and negative affectivity. Using 2 large school-age youth samples (clinic-referred sample: N = 662; school-based sample: N = 911), in the present study, we thoroughly examined the structure of the PANAS-C NA and PA scales and…

Effective and efficient methods are needed for identifying children who are at risk for later social-emotional challenges. Internal consistencies on the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) within this sample (N = 1208) are comparable to the DECA standardization sample. Mean t scores and standard deviations on the behavior concerns subscale…

Examines the structure of human abilities from a hierarchial viewpoint. Findings provided a description of the abilities that children may use in responding to the tasks included in the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised and provided a framework to generate clinical hypotheses about any child's performance. (LLL)

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test 3 models of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III (2-, 3-, and 4-factor conceptualizations) for 11 age groups with 200 subjects per age group. The four-factor model is somewhat supported, but its theoretical or clinical importance is unclear. (SLD)

Data from use of Rutter's Children's Behavior Questionnaire in a developing country suggest that the scale's factor structure is stable over sex and racial groups. (MP)

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) has a long history, dating back to the 1930s, when it was devised specifically for measuring the intelligence of children through verbal and performance subtests. Intelligence quotients (IQs) are developed for verbal and performance skills. The subtests, their factors, indices derived from them,…

Examines whether individual intelligence tests such as the WISC-R are biased against Hispanic school-aged children. Discusses three common but faulty notions of test bias, and advances a psychometric definition of bias. Analyzes evidence regarding external and internal validity. Presents guidelines for intellectual assessment of bilingual…