Expert: James Michael Roan - 4/13/2006

Question
My 4 year old was diagonsed by the county as being in the severe autism range on some type of autism scale. Are there specific characteristics (i.e. checklist) that must be met to get such a ranking (I think he was ranked at 41)or are most of the results based on observation?  

Answer
Hi John;

There are a number of checklists, but I suspect that the checklist that was used on your son was the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS). It has around a dozen or so areas of behavior that are rated by the user.

Since I do not have the scale in front of me, that is about all the assistance that I can offer at the moment.

Kind regards,
James