Evidence For Clinical Utility of a Dimensional Measure of Autistic Traits in Toddlers

In two toddler samples, higher Video-Referenced Rating of Reciprocal Social Behavior (vrRSB) scores distinguish toddlers with ASD from those without, with Cohen’s dRS=3.68 and dCS=1.04.

• Why it matters: The vrRSB’s clinical usefulness for separating toddlers with and without ASD was not formally established, limiting confidence in its role for early identification.
• What they did: The study compared vrRSB scores between ASD and non-ASD toddlers using t-tests and logistic regression in a research sample (nASD=92, nnon-ASD=456) and a clinically referred sample (nASD=127, nnon-ASD=44), also testing sex and race differences. ROC analyses contrasted vrRSB classification with M-CHAT.
• The result: Autistic toddlers had significantly higher vrRSB scores in both samples, and vrRSB showed similar area under the curve to M-CHAT while yielding higher sensitivity in the clinically referred sample, supporting secondary screening.

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