47 Prevalence of and Factors Associated with Language Impairment in Canadian Children with ASD
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a life-long neurodevelopmental disorder affecting 1 in 66 Canadians aged 5-17, and language impairment is a common comorbidity in this population. We aimed to determine the relative prevalence of diagnosed language impairment in children with ASD. We also examined factors associated with language impairment in children with ASD. Objectives 1 – To determine the relative prevalence of language impairment in children diagnosed with ASD. 2 – To identify factors associated with language impairment in children with ASD. Design/Methods Our study sample included 6,862 children aged 0-19 years, assessed for ASD (61% diagnosed with ASD) between 2010-2017 in British Columbia, Canada. ASD was diagnosed by a provincially qualified specialist and the assessment included the use of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2) and Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R). We also looked for associations between language impairment and gender, age, intellectual disability (ID), family history of language disorders, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), using chi-square analyses. Results The overall prevalence of language impairment in children diagnosed with ASD (n = 1820, 44%) was similar to those not diagnosed (n = 1199, 44%). There was more mixed receptive/expressive (80% vs 65%) and less expressive only (22% vs 29%) language impairment in children diagnosed with ASD than without. Looking only at the children diagnosed with ASD, there was no significant difference when evaluating gender (boys 44%, girls 41%; p = 0.094), but younger age was positively associated with language impairment (age <6y 53%, ≥6y 24%; p < 0.01). Increasing severity of ID was negatively associated with language impairment (mild: 44%, p = 0.911; moderate: 33%, p = 0.001; severe: 21%, p < 0.001). Family history of speech language disorder was positively associated with language impairment (no family history 12%, family history 20%; p < 0.01). Presence of comorbid ADHD was negatively associated with language impairment (no ADHD 47%, ADHD 28%; p < 0.01). Conclusion In children who have been referred for an ASD assessment, the prevalence of language impairment is similar in those with and without ASD. Children with ASD are more likely to be diagnosed with mixed language impairment than expressive only language impairment, although this difference may in part be due to challenges in fully assessing a child with ASD’s receptive language.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".