Screening for autism spectrum disorders in 12-month-old high-risk siblings by parental report.

Hampton et al. (2015) asked parents of baby siblings of children with autism to fill out a short form when the babies turned one year old.

The team then waited to see which children were later diagnosed with autism and which were not.

They checked if the early parent answers could tell the two groups apart.

Parents who said their 12-month-old played less, talked less, and copied sounds poorly were almost always the ones whose child later got an autism diagnosis.

The parent report was very good at ruling out autism when none of these signs were present.

Cohen et al. (2018) built on this idea and made an even shorter checklist that works at six months, pushing the screening window earlier and showing bigger effect sizes.

Shire et al. (2019) asked the same question with a different parent form, the FYI 2.0, at the same 12-month visit and got similar results, giving the idea a thumbs-up from a second tool.

Maddox et al. (2015) seems to disagree: they watched babies play and saw social gaps at 11 months, but parents in their study did not report problems. The gap is about method—what parents notice on paper versus what researchers see in person.

If you work with families who already have one child with autism, hand the parent a one-page checklist at the baby’s 12-month visit. Look for drops in play, communication, and sound copying. A low score gives you confidence to refer early and start intervention months sooner.