Assessing the minimally verbal school-aged child with autism spectrum disorder.
Test minimally verbal school-aged kids with tools built for their mental age, not their birth age, and let them use AAC if needed.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Kasari et al. (2013) asked experts how to test communication in school-aged kids with autism who speak few or no words.
The team looked at every major test and wrote a guide for clinicians.
What they found
The review says most tools miss these kids because they were built for toddlers or typical talkers.
Experts agreed: pick tests that match the child’s mental age, not birth age, and give extra breaks, pictures, or devices.
How this fits with other research
Tager-Flusberg et al. (2013) tells the same story in the same year—about 30% of kids with autism stay minimally verbal even after years of help.
Iacono et al. (2016) later showed that adding AAC, like tablets or picture boards, boosts requesting in this group.
Koenen et al. (2016) proved it works: kids who used speech-generating devices during play talked more after six months.
Stevenson et al. (2025) extends the idea to kids who are blind—no off-the-shelf test fits, so clinicians must tweak or build new ones.
Why it matters
If you test a minimally verbal eight-year-old with a four-year-old’s language test, you will get garbage data. Use the expert tips: pick tools that match the child’s developmental level, allow AAC, shorten sessions, and watch motor skills too—Suswaram et al. (2025) show they link tightly with communication. Front-load parent coaching in the first month, as Li et al. (2015) found this window gives the biggest gains.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This paper addresses the issue of assessing communication, language, and associated cognitive and behavioral abilities of minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), presenting a summary of a year-long series of meetings held by a group of experts in the field of ASD and National Institutes of Health staff. In this paper, our goals were to first define the population and then present general guidelines for optimizing assessment sessions for this challenging population. We then summarize the available measures that can be used across a variety of behavioral domains that are most directly relevant to developing language skills, including oral motor skills, vocal repertoire, receptive and expressive language, imitation, intentional communication, play, social behavior, repetitive and sensory behaviors, and nonverbal cognition. We conclude with a discussion of some of the limitations in the available measures and highlight recommendations for future research in this area.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2013 · doi:10.1037/a0014559