The Performance of the First Year Inventory (FYI) Screening on a Sample of High-Risk 12-Month-Olds Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at 36 Months.
Use the FYI 2.0 parent form at 12 months for baby siblings, but drop the cut-off score a little to spot autism sooner.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team gave the First Year Inventory 2.0 to 12-month-old baby brothers and sisters of children with autism.
These babies are called "high-risk" because they have a bigger chance of also having autism.
When the babies turned three, doctors checked who really had autism. Then the team looked back to see if the 12-month scores matched the later diagnosis.
What they found
Babies who were later diagnosed with autism scored much higher on the FYI at 12 months.
The old cut-off score missed too many babies in this high-risk group.
New, slightly lower cut-off scores caught more autism cases without raising false alarms too much.
How this fits with other research
Reznick et al. (2007) built the first FYI for general use; Shire et al. (2019) now show it also works in baby siblings, but only after you move the cut line.
Maddox et al. (2015) watched the same kind of babies at 11 months and saw less smiling and eye contact; the FYI parent form picks up similar social red flags just one month later.
Laposa et al. (2017) found shorter cry sounds in these babies; Y et al. add parent-report scores as a second, easy-to-collect warning sign.
Why it matters
If you screen baby brothers or sisters, use the FYI 2.0 with the adjusted cut-offs given here. You will catch more early cases and can start intervention months sooner.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study examined the performance of the First Year Inventory (FYI; version 2.0), a community-normed parent-reported screening instrument, in a high-risk (HR) sample of 12-month-olds with older siblings diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The FYI 2.0 was completed by parents of 86 HR infants and 35 low-risk control infants at age 12 months, followed by clinical diagnosis at 36 months. HR infants later diagnosed with ASD had significantly higher FYI 2.0 risk scores in both the social-communication and sensory-regulatory domains than typically developing infants. New FYI 2.0 cutoff scores for HR sample were explored by evaluating various cutoff options after considering tradeoffs between sensitivity and specificity and sample characteristics.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2019 · doi:10.1007/s10803-019-04208-5