| Individuals diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) exhibit qualitative deficits in social interaction, imaginative activity, and both verbal and nonverbal communication skills. Speech/language pathologists are often the first professionals to evaluate children with PDDs, because the parents' primary complaint typically involves the child's delay in speech/language skills. Therefore, tools that alert speech/language pathologists to the characteristics consistent with PDDs are beneficial for early diagnosis.; This study validated the Disorder-Specific Case History Form for making appropriate psychological referrals for children who exhibit behaviors suggestive of a PDD. Responses from parents for three groups of children (nonclinical, speech/language impaired, and PDDs) were studied. All except one of the item-to-total correlations for the six variables (Language, Infancy, Play, Conduct, General, and Fears) were statistically significant at the .01 level. Cronbach's alpha results demonstrated that the internal consistency reliability was excellent for both the Conduct and General variables, the Language and Play variables had acceptable reliability coefficients, while the Infancy and fear variables were not stable.; Analysis of the six variables indicated that the amount of variance accounted for is 40%, and post hoc analyses suggested that behavioral characteristics of children with PDDs differ significantly from behavioral characteristics of the other two groups. The discriminant function analysis of the six behavioral factors correctly classifies the three research groups 70.6% of the time, with even higher prediction rates for the nonclinical and PDD groups independently (84% and 83%, respectively). Most significantly, no participant in the PDD group was misclassified in the normal group. It was concluded that behaviors as measured by the form effectively separated a group of children diagnosed with a PDD from both a group of children diagnosed with a speech/language impairment and an age-matched control group of normally developing children. Thus, referrals to professionals for further evaluation of behavioral conditions are made reliably when using the Disorder-Specific Case History Form. |
