Comparison Of The Children Neuropsychological And Behavior Scale And The Griffiths Mental Development Scales When Assessing The Development Of Children With Autism

Hong-Hua Li; Jun-Yan Feng; Bing Wang; Yu Zhang; Cheng-Xin Wang; Fei-Yong Jia

doi:10.2147/PRBM.S225904

Comparison Of The Children Neuropsychological And Behavior Scale And The Griffiths Mental Development Scales When Assessing The Development Of Children With Autism

Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2019 Oct 16:12:973-981. doi: 10.2147/PRBM.S225904. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Hong-Hua Li¹, Jun-Yan Feng¹, Bing Wang¹, Yu Zhang¹, Cheng-Xin Wang¹, Fei-Yong Jia^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin 130021, People's Republic of China.
² Neurological Research Center of the First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Background: The newly revised Children Neuropsychological and Behavior Scale (CNBS-R2016) is a diagnostic assessment tool widely used in China to assess the developmental level of children aged 0 to 6 years. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the effectiveness of developmental assessment in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by the CNBS-R2016 was consistent with that of the Griffiths Mental Development Scales for China (GDS-C).

Methods: In total, 139 children with ASD were recruited in this study. The Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC) and the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) were used to measure ASD severity. All subjects were evaluated with both the CNBS-R2016 and GDS-C. To determine the consistency between the CNBS-R2016 and GDS-C, Pearson correlation coefficients and Bland-Altman plots were computed. The GDS-C was used as a reference assessment, and the performance of the CNBS-R2016 was analyzed with receiver operating curves.

Results: No significant difference was found between the proportions of developmental delays detected by the CNBS-R2016 subscales and the corresponding GDS-C subscales. The CNBS-R2016 Communication Warning Behavior subscale quotients and the total ABC and CARS scores were significantly and positively correlated. The general and subscale quotients of the CNBS-R2016 and the corresponding quotient of the GDS-C were also significantly and positively correlated. The area under all the curves of the CNBS-R2016 was above 0.8 according to the results of the GDS-C (general or subscale quotient <70 indicates a developmental delay), and Bland-Altman plots showed no systemic bias between the two scales.

Conclusion: The CNBS-R2016 and GDS-C tests showed good consistency in the developmental assessment of children with ASD. In addition, the CNBS-R2016 allows the simultaneous assessment of autism symptoms and the developmental level. Therefore, the CNBS-R2016 is worthy of clinical application in children aged 0-6 years.

Keywords: Children Neuropsychological and Behavior Scale; Griffiths Mental Development Scales; autism spectrum disorders; children; developmental assessment.

Grants and funding

The National Key Research and Development Program of China (No: 2016YFC1306204), Natural Science Foundation of China (No: 81602847) and Transformation Fund Project of the First Hospital of Jilin University (No: JDYYZH-1902034) supported this work.