The Parent Interview for Autism-Clinical Version (PIA-CV): a measure of behavioral change for young children with autism.
The PIA-CV parent interview gives BCBAs a simple, repeatable way to spot real gains in toddler social-communication skills.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Katz et al. (2003) built a parent interview called the PIA-CV. It asks parents about social and communication behaviors in toddlers with autism.
They checked if the answers stay steady over time and if the tool picks up real changes as kids grow from age 2 to 4.
What they found
The PIA-CV scores hang together well. Parents give consistent answers when asked again.
The interview catches small, real shifts in eye contact, pointing, and back-and-forth play across the toddler years.
How this fits with other research
Wetterneck et al. (2006) also built a parent interview, but theirs hunts for extra disorders like ADHD and OCD in school-age kids. Both tools trust parent words, yet each serves a different job.
Doughty et al. (2015) used a parent interview in a hospital to map crisis behaviors in older youth. Their Iceberg tool and the PIA-CV both turn parent stories into data, showing the method works across settings and ages.
Sappok et al. (2015) tested a short checklist, the SCQ, in adults with ID. It screens quickly; the PIA-CV digs deeper for toddlers. Short versus long, but both lean on caregiver report.
Why it matters
You now have a free, low-tech way to track early autism symptoms without dragging toddlers through long tests. Run the PIA-CV at intake, six months later, and again at four. If scores move, you’ll know your intervention is nudging social and communication skills in the right direction.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The Parent Interview for Autism-Clinical Version (PIA-CV) was developed to measure autism symptom severity across a wide range of behavioral domains. Two studies were conducted to examine the psychometric properties of the PIA-CV for a sample of children under 3 years old. Results of study 1 revealed adequate internal consistency for nine of the 11 PIA-CV dimensions, as well as significant group differences on social-communication domains between 2-year-old children with autism and a developmentally matched sample. Study 2 examined the association between changes in PIA-CV scores and changes in autism symptomatology from age 2 to age 4. Results revealed that changes on PIA-CV dimensions assessing social and communication skills were associated with clinically significant behavioral and diagnostic improvements. These findings support the utility of the PIA-CV for obtaining ecologically valid information from parents and for measuring behavioral change in young children with autism.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2003 · doi:10.1177/1362361303007001003