The Autism Diagnostic Interview - Revised (ADI-R)
The Autism Diagnostic Interview - Revised, known as ADI-R is a standardized clinical review in which an interview will be conducted between the examiner and the caregiver of children and/or adults. The interview consists of 93 items and focuses on three areas:
• Quality of social interaction: comfort seeking/ offering, social responding to others, emotional sharing
• Communication and language: short utterance of words, social language ability
• Repetitive, restricted and/or stereotyped interests and behaviour: difficulty in concentrating, unusual sensory interests
The interview also covers some additional parts such as self-injury and over-activity, which might be helpful in treatment planning afterwards. Responses are evaluated by the professionals based on the parents/ caregivers description of the child's behaviour.
The questions on the interview focus on current behaviour, not counting a few behaviours that only occur in specific years of age. The interview gives these cases "age restrictions", for example questions about group play are intended for children between 4 to 10 years old, while questions about reciprocal friendships are only for children ages 5 and above.
In general, each question of the interview, while mainly asking about current behaviour, also focuses on the time periods while the concerned behaviours will most likely occur, usually between age 4 and age 5.
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Bibliography:
Websites:
Autism Genetic Resource Exchange:
www.agre.org/program/aboutadi.cfm
The National Autistic Society
http://www.nas.org.uk/