Symptoms of autism among children with congenital deafblindness.

Dammeyer (2014) looked at kids born both deaf and blind. He gave them the Autism Behavior Checklist. He wanted to see if their sensory loss alone pushed the scores up.

The kids also had learning delays. He compared their scores to other kids with delays who could see and hear.

The deaf-blind kids scored just as high on the checklist as the other delay group. Worse vision or hearing did not make the scores climb higher.

High scores did not link to worse sensory loss. The tool seemed to flag the same amount of 'autism-like' items in both groups.

Gallagher et al. (2003) first showed that deaf children with autism act the same as hearing children with autism. Dammeyer (2014) agrees, but adds a warning: in kids who are both deaf and blind, the checklist may credit sensory effects to autism.

Kiani et al. (2019) later found that adults with learning delays and congenital blindness were three times more likely to meet autism cut-offs. Both studies say the same thing: sensory loss can pump up scores, so interpret with care.

Wright et al. (2022) gave us a fix. They tweaked the ADI-R for deaf children and kept good accuracy. The pattern is clear: standard tools over-call autism in sensory-impaired groups; adapted tools give cleaner answers.

Before you write 'autism' on a deaf-blind child's plan, pause. High checklist scores might mirror sensory gaps, not social ones. Pair the checklist with real-life play probes, communication trials, and parent clips. If scores stay high, borrow ideas from Barry's ADI-R Deaf Adaptation or Sasson et al. (2022) screeners. Your report will be sharper and the child will get the right kind of help.