Navigating the autism diagnostic system: Implications for earlier identification.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Autism Spectrum Disorders are characterized by repetitive, stereotyped behaviours and impairments in communication and socialization. The present research examined parents' experiences during the course of obtaining an autism diagnosis for their children. Participants, who resided throughout Ontario, were recruited through the Autism Society of Ontario and the Summit Centre Preschool for Children with Autism. The questionnaire was designed for the present research and focused on parents' initial concerns about their children's development and attempts at seeking professional help. By parent report, the children were diagnosed with Autistic Disorder (N = 52), Asperger's Disorder (N = 7) and PDD-NOS (N = 21). Results indicate that in 75% of cases, symptoms of autism were first identified by children's mothers at 19.71 months of age on average. The average amount of time that had passed between the age at which parents initially became concerned about their children's development and the age at the first appointment with a professional to address their concerns was 10.38 months. For the entire sample, the average age at diagnosis was 4.29 years of age and results of the research suggest that children are being diagnosed at younger ages over time. Child demographic variables (i.e., gender, ethnicity, birth order and socioeconomic status) did not significantly impact age at initial concern, the help-seeking delay and age at diagnosis. Parents believed that increasing medical doctors' knowledge about autism, decreasing the amount of time on waiting lists and having more professionals available to assess and diagnose autism would make the autism diagnostic system more efficient. Implications of the results for facilitating earlier diagnosis are discussed.Dept. of Psychology. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2005 .S665. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-03, page: 1517. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2005.
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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 | 0.009 | 0.065 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.001 |
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".