title: Bengali translation and characterisation of four cognitive and trait measures for autism spectrum conditions in India.
abstract: Autism is characterised by atypical social-communicative behaviour and restricted range of interests and repetitive behaviours. These features exist in a continuum in the general population. Behavioural measures validated across cultures and languages are required to quantify the dimensional traits of autism in these social and non-social domains. Bengali is the seventh most spoken language in the world. However, there is a serious dearth of data on standard measures of autism-related social and visual cognition in Bengali.
  
  
  
  Bengali translations of two measures related to social-communicative functioning (the Children's Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) and a facial emotion recognition test with stimuli taken from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database), one measure of visual perceptual disembedding (the Embedded Figures Test), and a questionnaire measure (the Children's Empathy Quotient) were tested in 25 children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and 26 control children (mean age = 10.7 years) in Kolkata, India. Group differences were analysed byttest and multiple regression (after accounting for potential effects of gender, IQ, and age).
  
  
  
  Behavioural and trait measures were associated with group differences in the expected directions: ASC children scored lower on the Children's Empathy Quotient and the RMET, as well as on facial emotion recognition, but were faster and more accurate on the Embedded Figures Test. Distributional properties of these measures within groups are similar to those reported in Western countries.
  
  
  
  These results provide an empirical demonstration of cross-cultural generalisability and applicability of these standard behavioural and trait measures related to autism, in a major world language.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK ; Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Alokananda
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rudra
authors.affiliation: Mental Health Foundation, Kolkata, India.
authors.forename: Jai Ranjan
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Ram
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Loucas
authors.affiliation: The Com DEALL Trust, Bangalore, India ; Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
authors.forename: Matthew K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Belmonte
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
authors.forename: Bhismadev
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6649-7895
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chakrabarti
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D004645:Empathy; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D007361:Intelligence Tests / Q000592:standards*; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D012044:Regression Analysis; D066107:Social Skills; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D056345:Theory of Mind; D014177:Translations
keywords: Assessment; Autism; Behaviour; Bengali; Central coherence; India; Perceptual construal; Theory of mind; Translation; Validity