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ViewAttendees 2

Symposia

Autism Spectrum and Developmental Disorders

Community-partnered research to improve mental health assessment and treatment for autistic individuals

2 - (SYM 128) Profiles of Parent-teacher Agreement on Autistic Children's Adaptive Functioning

Sunday, November 17, 2024
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM EST
Location: Grand Ballroom I/J, Level 5, Downtown Marriott
Abstract Body



Background: Adaptive functioning (AF) refers to the practical, communication and social skills necessary to navigate daily life. Autistic youth vary in their AF, and this can indicate their treatment need (Taylor & Henninger, 2015). Clinical guidelines indicate both parent and teacher reports should be used in the assessment of AF (De Los Reyes et al., 2022). However, informant reports vary in their level and direction of agreement (e.g., parent vs. teacher higher) and across the child’s AF level (Jordan et al., 2019, Dickson et al., 2018). Identifying factors associated with parent-teacher AF agreement could be critical for assessment of autistic youth. Executive functions such as inhibition and cognitive flexibility are associated with AF skills and could enable a child to behave differently at home vs at school, thus contributing to level of informant agreement. We aimed to characterise parent-teacher agreement on AF using a subgroup approach, and to compare executive function across groups.



Methods: Data were taken from the Pathways in ASD study, a longitudinal inception cohort study of autistic children recruited from 5 sites across Canada. When children were approximately 8.5 years old, parent and teacher reports of adaptive function (VABS-II; Sparrow et al., 2005) and executive function behaviours (BRIEF; Gioia et al., 2000) were collected. Parent and teacher ratings on 3 primary VABS-II subscales were used as indicators in a latent profile analysis (n=149). The role of executive function on parent-teacher reports of AF was estimated using multinomial logistic regression, with latent profile as the outcome.



Results: A four-profile solution was chosen as the best fit for the data. We identified a lower AF group, for whom parent-report was higher than teacher-report (n=39, 26%), a moderate AF group with good parent and teacher agreement (n=59, 40%) and two groups with higher AF, who had similar parent scores across all subscales, but discrepant patterns of parent/teacher agreement. In one group, teachers reported lower scores than parents on all subscales (n=23, 16%), whereas in the other, teachers reported higher scores than parents on all subscales (n=28, 19%). Analyses found the higher AF, teacher-higher group had better executive function skills (particularly metacognitive) than the higher AF, teacher-lower and the moderate AF group.



Conclusion: Most autistic youth were characterised by discrepancy between parent and teacher reports of their AF. Executive function behaviours may provide insight into discrepancy across contexts.