Early autism assessments provide valuable insights into your child’s development, identifying areas for proactive intervention and support.
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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) doesn’t have to stop your child’s behavioral development. At Scottsdale PBS we assist your child in their difficulties engaging in social interactions and making and maintaining friends with other children.
Our goal at Scottsdale PBS is to provide thorough ASD evaluations to allow for opportunities for early and proactive interventions that can help minimize your child’s failures, improve their chances for success, and provide additional insight on how to best support your child’s emotional, behavioral, and academic development. Areas assessed through this evaluation include intellect, language development, pre-academic readiness skills, self-regulatory skills, emerging executive functioning, motor, and social-emotional skills.
Our early signs of autism experts and assessments can help spot the signs of early autism spectrum disorder with more accuracy. Some signs of autism can include: limited or no shared enjoyment in social games, poor conversational skills, limited social engagement and reciprocity, poor eye contact, and other forms of nonverbal or social difficulties.
At Scottsdale PBS, our psychologist utilizes a variety of strategies to assess your child’s social skills, use of language, adaptive skills, behavioral concerns, and, if necessary, executive functioning.
Each of our autism evaluations includes the following: An initial intake interview with parents or caregivers, a review of any relevant records, and detailed feedback to produce a comprehensive report of our findings and recommendations.
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Autism is called a spectrum disorder because there’s a big range of symptoms people experience. Some kids have strong verbal skills but struggle with social cues, others are nonverbal but great at pattern recognition. Some need lots of daily support, others live independently as adults. That’s why we call it a spectrum.
We use several standardized assessment tools to get the whole picture of your child’s development. The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2) is structured play and social interactions. We also assess the areas mentioned in our evaluation: intellect, language development, pre-academic readiness skills, self-regulatory skills, emerging executive functioning, motor skills, and social-emotional development. Parents and teachers complete detailed questionnaires about your child’s behavior at home and school. Each tool gives us different pieces of information that help us put it all together.
Our evaluations follow the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition). This means persistent challenges in social communication and interaction, plus restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. The symptoms have to be present from early development and cause significant impairment in daily functioning. We carefully assess each area to see if your child meets these specific criteria.
During direct observation, our psychologist watches your child interact, play and communicate in structured activities. We observe their eye contact, response to their name, interest in sharing experiences with others, and how they use toys or objects. We also look at their communication attempts, verbal and nonverbal, and any repetitive behaviors or focused interests. This assessment shows us how your child behaves naturally in different situations and helps us understand their unique behavioral patterns.
While our licensed psychologist leads our autism evaluations, we bring in other professionals as needed. This might be a speech-language pathologist to assess communication skills, an occupational therapist to evaluate sensory processing and daily living skills, or a developmental pediatrician to review medical factors. We also get input from your child’s teachers and other caregivers who see them in different settings. This team approach is what makes Scottsdale PBS so different in pediatric behavioral health.
