ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE. Sensory modulation issues have a significant impact on participation in daily life. Moreover, understanding phenotypic variation in sensory modulation dysfunction is crucial for research related to defining homogeneous groups and for clinical work in guiding treatment planning. We thus evaluated the new Sensory Processing Scale (SPS) Assessment. METHOD. Research included item development, behavioral scoring system development, test administration, and item analyses to evaluate reliability and validity across sensory domains. RESULTS. Items with adequate reliability (internal reliability >.4) and discriminant validity (p < .01) were retained. Feedback from the expert panel also contributed to decisions about retaining items in the scale. CONCLUSION. The SPS Assessment appears to be a reliable and valid measure of sensory modulation (scale reliability >.90; discrimination between group effect sizes >1.00). This scale has the potential to aid in differential diagnosis of sensory modulation issues.
Subject(s)
Sensation Disorders/diagnosis , Adolescent , Child , Child, Preschool , Humans , Psychometrics , Reproducibility of Results , Young AdultABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The measurement of head circumference (HC) is widely used in clinical and research settings as a proxy of neural growth. Although it could aid data collection, no studies have explored either the reliability of adult self-measurements or parental measurements of young children. This study therefore aimed to examine whether adult self and parental measurement of HC constitute reliable data. FINDINGS: A total of 57 adults (32 male) were asked to measure their HC twice following written instructions (adult self-measurement). These measures were compared to those of a researcher independently measuring the same participant's HC twice. Additionally, mothers of 25 children (17 male) were also asked to measure their child's HC (parental measure), and again this was compared to researcher measurements of the child's HC. The intraclass correlation coefficient between adult self- and researcher measurement was 0.84 and between parent and researcher measurement was 0.99. The technical error of measurement was also acceptable, within the range of a skilled anthropometrist. CONCLUSIONS: The high degree of agreement between researcher and adult self-measurement/parental measurement of HC demonstrates that these different assessors produce similarly reliable and reproducible data. This suggests adult self- and parental measurements can reliably be used for data collection to enable valid large-scale developmental and clinical studies of HC.
ABSTRACT
Migraine headaches are associated with sensory hyperreactivity and anxiety in the general population, but it is unknown whether this is also the case in autism spectrum disorders. This pilot study asked parents of 81 children (aged 7-17 years) with autism spectrum disorders to report their child's migraine occurrence, sensory hyperreactivity (Sensory Over-Responsivity Inventory), and anxiety symptoms (Spence Child Anxiety Scale). Children with autism spectrum disorders who experienced migraine headaches showed greater sensory hyperreactivity and anxiety symptomatology (p < 0.01; medium effect size for both) than those without migraines. Sensory hyperreactivity and anxiety symptomatology were additionally correlated (ρ = 0.31, p = 0.005). This study provides preliminary evidence for a link between migraine headaches, sensory hyperreactivity, and anxiety symptomatology in autism spectrum disorders, which may suggest strategies for subtyping and exploring a common pathogenesis.
