Autismo em bebês : sintomas e proposta de triagem no primeiro ano de vida

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a biologically based developmental disorder characterized by persistent communication and social interaction deficits and rigid and repetitive patterns.Diagnosis and intervention are the main tools for good prognosis in this population. We carried out two studies to characterize autism in early development, the first being a scoping review of the literature in which the objective was to gather, organize and systematize the symptoms of autism in the first 12 months of the baby. We used the PRISMA-ScRtool and we made systematic research techniques in three electronic databases -PubMed, PsyncINFO and ERIC - followed by manual article tracking tools using the snowball technique. The result was the inclusion of 40 articles, 38 of which showed that it was possible to observe ASD symptoms from the beginning of life. It was also founda trajectory of decline in the abilities of babies with autism. The second article aimed to build a heteroreport questionnaire for screening for ASD in the first year. For this, we build the First Year Questionnaire (FYQ) in order to operationalize the operants that would be more indicative of ASD; we validated the FYQ through the analysis of technical judges and pilot testing, and subsequently applied the FYQ to a sample of parents. The validation results considered the CVC of each FYQ item and obtained adequate values (greater than or equal to 0.80). The sample of application counted with 1877 parents who answered the questionnaire. The data was evaluated by exploratory factorial analysis in which all the results were in adequate statistical values. The analysis of the ROC curvature (AUC>0.90) made it possible to establish a FYQ cut-off point from 20 points for ASD screening at any time during the first year of the babies' lives. The results of both studies demonstrate that it is possible to observe ASD symptoms in the first year of life as well as use autism screening tools in babies.This is the starting point for future research to produce intensive behavioral intervention technology for this population in order to prevent the formation of a chain of losses.