Cognitive Abilities and Irritability Are the Main Factors Influencing Initial Placement of Autistic Preschoolers in Special or Mainstream Education in Israel.
In Israel, preschool teams pick special vs mainstream classes using IQ and irritability alone, ignoring autism severity.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team looked at 120 autistic preschoolers in Israel. They wanted to know which traits steer kids into special-ed or mainstream classes.
They tested IQ, irritability, autism severity, and daily-living skills. Then they ran a model to see which scores best matched the real placement decision.
What they found
Cognitive score and irritability level guessed the placement right 76 % of the time.
Surprise: how autistic the child looked on ADOS and how well they dressed or ate did not add any extra power to the guess.
How this fits with other research
Laugeson et al. (2014) already showed that even small IQ bumps lift adaptive skills in low-IQ kids. Moran’s data say the same IQ number is now the main gatekeeper for classroom type.
Pastor-Cerezuela et al. (2020) found more sensory and executive problems predict worse attention and memory in grade school. Moran flips the lens: at preschool exit, it is raw IQ and mood, not sensory profile, that decide where the child will sit.
Némorin et al. (2025) split new ASD diagnoses into four sub-types using symptom plus adaptive data. Moran shrinks that wide picture into two numbers teams actually use when the rubber meets the road.
Why it matters
If you sit on placement teams, weight your report toward cognitive testing and irritability scales. Parents can then see why mainstream is or is not on the table. For kids on the edge, a short cognitive boost program or irritability plan might tip the vote toward inclusion.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add the most recent cognitive and irritability scores to the top of your next placement summary sheet.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Following diagnosis, autistic children are often placed in preschool settings that vary along a continuum from exclusive special education to inclusive mainstream education. These settings differ in their staff composition and expertise, ability to implement structured autism interventions, ability to integrate autistic and typically developing children, and costs. Here, we examined whether there were significant differences in the behavioral abilities and developmental difficulties of children placed in special versus mainstream public education in Israel, where there is a systematic dichotomy between the two educational settings. We analyzed data from 165 autistic children, 120 in special and 45 in mainstream education, who completed comprehensive behavioral assessments at a mean age of 37.8 months, as they entered their first preschool setting. Children placed in special education exhibited significantly poorer cognitive abilities and higher irritability and hyperactivity than children in mainstream education while there were no significant differences in autism severity or adaptive behaviors across groups. Moreover, cognitive and irritability scores were sufficient for classifying children across the two settings with an average accuracy of 76.4% when using a pruned decision tree algorithm and a 5-fold cross-validation procedure. These findings extend previous research by demonstrating that cognitive abilities and irritability are the strongest predictors of preschool educational placement. Further longitudinal research is needed to determine whether these placement decisions benefit the children as they develop.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2026 · doi:10.1002/aur.70188