A Comparison of Parent Reports, the Mental Synthesis Evaluation Checklist (MSEC) and the Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist (ATEC), with the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS)

Abstract

This study compares two parent reports, the Mental Synthesis Evaluation Checklist (MSEC) and the Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist (ATEC), with the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS). The ATEC consists of four subscales, as follows: (1) expressive language, (2) sociability, (3) sensory awareness, and (4) health. The MSEC is complementary to the ATEC in measuring complex language comprehension. The parents of 143 autistic children, from 2 to 22 years of age (mean 6.7 ± 5.1 years), completed the MSEC and the ATEC questionnaires and a clinician assessed their CARS score. The CARS score correlated strongly with all parent reports, the complex language comprehension MSEC (r = 0.60, p r = 0.66, p r = 0.58, p r = 0.71, p r = 0.53, p r = 0.75, p r = 0.77, p < 0.0001). These results suggest a high fidelity of the MSEC and ATEC parent reports and especially of their composite score, total ATEC + MSEC.

Keywords

• MSEC
• ATEC
• language delay
• developmental disorder
• autism
• psychological evaluations