Measuring Changes in Social Communication Behaviors: Preliminary Development of the Brief Observation of Social Communication Change (BOSCC).

AUTISM; RESEARCH funding; SOCIAL skills; INTER-observer reliability; SEVERITY of illness index; MEDICAL coding; DESCRIPTIVE statistics

Psychometric properties and initial validity of the Brief Observation of Social Communication Change (BOSCC), a measure of treatment-response for social-communication behaviors, are described. The BOSCC coding scheme is applied to 177 video observations of 56 young children with ASD and minimal language abilities. The BOSCC has high to excellent inter-rater and test-retest reliability and shows convergent validity with measures of language and communication skills. The BOSCC Core total demonstrates statistically significant amounts of change over time compared to a no change alternative while the ADOS CSS over the same period of time did not. This work is a first step in the development of a novel outcome measure for social-communication behaviors with applications to clinical trials and longitudinal studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)