title: Can autism, language and coordination disorders be differentiated based on ability profiles?
abstract: Children with autistic disorder (AD), mixed receptive-expressive language disorder (RELD), or developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have impairments in common. We assess which abilities differentiate the disorders. Children aged 3-13 years diagnosed with AD (n = 30), RELD (n = 30), or DCD (n = 22) were tested on measures of language, intelligence, social cognition, motor coordination, and executive functioning. Results indicate that the AD and DCD groups have poorer fine and gross motor coordination and better response inhibition than the RELD group. The AD and DCD groups differ in fine and gross motor coordination, emotion understanding, and theory of mind scores (AD always lower), but discriminant function analysis yielded a non-significant function and more classification errors for these groups. In terms of ability scores, the AD and DCD groups appear to differ more in severity than in kind.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Curtin University of Technology, Bentley, WA, Australia.
authors.forename: Sarah N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Wisdom
authors.forename: Murray J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Dyck
authors.forename: Jan P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Piek
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hay
authors.forename: Joachim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hallmayer
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001076:Aptitude; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D019957:Motor Skills Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D011340:Problem Solving; D012016:Reference Values; D012951:Socialization; D014888:Wechsler Scales