Mind, Brain, and Education

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neural developmental disorder characterized by deficits in verbal and nonverbal communication and by impaired social interactions (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Adaptive behaviors are “the skills needed by individuals to function and be self‐sufficient within their everyday environments” (Yang, Paynter, & Gilmore, 2016, p. 64). In previous Western research, the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales were widely used to assess adaptive behavior in children with ASD (Eapen, Crncec, & Walter, 2013; Lane, Paynter, & Sharman, 2013; Yang et al., 2016). However, until now, there has not been a scale to measure adaptive behavior in Chinese children with ASD. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to develop a scale to explicitly measure adaptive behavior in Chinese children with ASD. The study also aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the scale, specifically the dimensionality, internal consistency, and validity.

METHOD

Measures

In this study, the items of the scale were generated by literature search and observations in classrooms about the deficits in Chinese children's adaptive behavior skills. The items focused on communication, socialization, daily living skills, and motor skills. As shown in Table 1, the initial scale had 20 items. We invited two Chinese professors whose research focuses on autism to evaluate the content validity of the scale. We also asked teachers and parents to give comments on the scale. Children's behaviors were rated by an observer on a 6‐point scale, ranging from 0 (no response) to 5 ( completely correct). Scores were summed across dimensions to create subscale scores; higher scores indicated more adaptive behavior.

Table 1. The Content of the 20 Items

Item number
Item 1		Name the object (“comb”).
Item 2		Name the object (“aircraft”).
Item 3		Name the object (“dog”).
Item 4		Identify the roles in a picture (image: mother hen mom takes baby chicks to find food).
Item 5		Show what crying looks like.
Item 6		Show what laughing looks like.
Item 7		Show what angry looks like.
Item 8		Can say “I am here” during morning roll call.
Item 9		Take a ball with specific color (i.e., blue) from off a blanket.
Item 10		Take out two blue balls and give them to the teacher.
Item 11		Can help teacher put books back.
Item 12		Can say “hello” to teachers at the beginning of a class and say “goodbye” at end of the class
Item 13		Identify a plate.
Item 14		Identify a bow.
Item 15		Bang the table.
Item 16		Put on a shoe.
Item 17		Return the cup after drinking.
Item 18		Go through a cave.
Item 19		Pass wool knitting string through a hole.
Item 20		Draw a circle.

RESULTS

Correlational analysis demonstrated a significant positive relationship between age and the scores of the four dimensions (communication, r = .21, p = .018; socialization, r = .22, p = .015; daily living skills, r = .25, p = .006; motor skills, r = .18; p = .050) indicating that older children displayed more adaptive behavior than younger children. As shown in Figure 1, a confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the construct validity of the scale. The analysis was conducted in AMOS 7.0. Results revealed that the factor loadings of all indicators were significant, and the goodness of fit indices of the model were acceptable, χ²(164, n = 121) =311.65, χ²/df = 1.90, comparative fit index = 0.92; Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) =0.91, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.08. Taken together, this suggests that the four‐factor model fit the data acceptably. Reliability analysis indicated that the internal consistency for each scale dimension was excellent (communication, α = .93; socialization, α = .88; daily living skills, α = .87; motor skills, α = .82). The Guttman split‐half reliabilities were acceptable as well (communication = .88; socialization = .80; daily living skills = .83; motor skills = .70). Descriptive data including means and standard deviations of the four dimensions for boys and girls are shown in Table 2. Independent t‐test analyses revealed that boys scored significantly higher in three out of the four dimensions compared to girls (communication, t(119) = 2.65, p = .009, Cohen's d = 0.48; socialization, t(119) = 2.64, p = .045, Cohen's d = 0.48; motor skills, t(119) = 2.84, p = .005, Cohen's d = 0.52). There were no significant differences between boys and girls in daily living skills (t(119) = 1.81, p = .074).

DISCUSSION

The present study significantly contributes to the research on ASD by developing a scale that can be used to measure Chinese children's adaptive behavior skills. To our knowledge, this is the first instrument specifically designed to measure adaptive behavior skills among Chinese children. The psychometric evaluation of this scale suggests good validity and reliability (i.e., construct validity and internal consistency). Furthermore, gender differences were found suggesting that boys with ASD were rated as having more adaptive behaviors across three dimensions (i.e., communication, socialization, and motor skills) compared to girls.

The present study has some limitations. First, the participants came from only one city and its immediate surrounding rural areas; future research should recruit participants from multiple and more urban areas in China. Second, in this study the children were rated by a postgraduate student. Future research would benefit from additional observers to test interrater reliability of their evaluations. Third, our participants only consisted of young children; future research should examine the reliability and validity of this scale by using older children. In sum, our findings suggest that this scale is a valid and useful instrument for evaluating adaptive behaviors among young Chinese children with ASD.