The Early Social Cognition Inventory - Autism Version: psychometric properties for young children with autism spectrum disorder

In this study, we examined the psychometric properties of the Early Social Cognition Inventory (ESCI) in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study included 76 typically developing children (TDC) (mean age= 39.28 months) and 81 participants (mean age= 36.07 months) with clinical diagnoses of ASD. The parents completed both the ESCI and Modified checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) checklists. Our exploratory factor analysis of the ESCI in children with autism revealed two factors (joint attention and understanding beliefs and emotions) with 17 items. We named this 17-item scale the Early Social Cognition Inventory - Autism Version (ESCI-AV). Regarding convergent validity, we found a strong correlation between the ESCI-AV and the M-CHAT (rho = 0.786, p < .001. The discriminant validity of the ESCI-AV was determined by comparing ESCI-AV scores of children with ASD and children with TDC using an independent t-test. The results revealed that TDC scored significantly higher than children with ASD on the ESCI-AV (t = -11.61, df= 155, p < 0.001), thus indicating good discriminant validity of the ESCI-AV. In addition, reliability was assessed using Kuder-Richardson 20 (KR20) and Guttman spilt-half coefficients. Both KR20 (0.85) and Guttman's split-half (0.88) were high, indicating good reliability and internal consistency of the ESCI-AV. This study indicates that the ESCI-AV measures social cognition in children with ASD under the age of 5 years in a reliable and valid way.