The Applicable Analysis Of Ohta Staging In The Cognitive Developmental Assessment Of Children With Autism

The autism, also named early infantile autism, is one kind of pervasive developmental disorders, which involves severe, extensive social interaction, communication impairments and rigid behavior, interest and activity. In recent years, the incidence rate of autism is getting higher and higher. Autism has aroused widespread concern in society. The scheme of"early detection, early assessment and early treatment"has become the consensus at education in autism. Effective early intervention can decrease or prevent the influence of natural or environmental adverse factor, also accelerate individual's whole development. To develop assessment tools which have instructional significance to educational intervention is the aim of autism educators all over the world.Among the assessment tools of early intervention for autistic children, TEAACH of North Carolina assesses autistic children mostly according to"Psycho-Educational Profile For Children with Autism and Related Developmental Disability---PEP". Indigenous measure instruments were developed in Japan, such as Xicun's"development diagnosis scale for Early childhood"and Ohta Staging. China lacks of indigenous measure tools in cognitive assessment of autism. At present, most measure tools are the revised overseas corresponding tools involve PEP-C,ADI, CARS,ABC etc. In recent years, with the promotion of Sino-Japanese academic exchange in autism education,Japanese scholar Ohta idea of autism education and Ohta Staging was introduced into China. Based on translation of original work of Ohta, this study deciphered in detail the background of research and development of"Ohta Staging", theory foundation and partition of Ohta development stage, meanwhile revised the suitability of Chinese (language) version of its test tool---language decoding test (LDT-R).This study sampled 60 children with autism and 60 normal children from Beijing and Dalian, and used LDT-R to assess their cognitive development according to Ohta Staging. The results indicated: LDT-R test possess good reliability and validity. Ordinary children's physical age was consonant with developmental norm divided by Ohta Stage. Ohta Stages of autistic children's cognitive development have significant positive correlation with children's ages. Autistic children and ordinary children have significant difference in stages in stages categorized by LDT-R scores. Cognitive developmental stages of autistic children evidently lag behind those of ordinary children of the same age. The above-mentioned results proved that Otha staging is applicable to the cognitive development stages of children with autism in China. It can accurately evaluate children's corresponding cognitive developmental levels, and provide an effective evaluation tool for the autistic children's parents and teachers to grasp the children's cognitive developmental condition and comprehend children's emotion and abnormal behavior.