Assessing movement skills in children with autism: A generalizability analysis

The movement skill abilities of fourteen children with autism were assessed on three movement tasks: the overhand throw, kick and horizontal jump. Skill level was assessed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Correlations were calculated to determine the relationship between these two measures on all skill items.;A Generalizability Analysis was conducted to determine the minimal conditions required to observe reliably the movement skills of children with autism. The conditions generalized in this study were observers and trials.;The results indicated that there was a significant relationship between quantitative and qualitative measures on the horizontal jump and the kick. A correlation of.37 was obtained for the overhand throw, but was not considered significant. Results of the generalizability analysis indicated that reliable results were obtained with one observer and one trial for all three skill items.