Adapting the ECI: A pilot study (Nowell et al., 2024)

Purpose: We sought to conduct a pilot investigation of the reliability and administration fidelity of a new play-based measure of social communication for infants and toddlers with an autism diagnosis.

Method: Our team adapted an existing measure, the Early Communication Indicator (ECI), for use with young autistic children in clinical and research contexts. In this brief report, we detail our adaptation process including administration and scoring of the final adapted measure based on data from a two-phase pilot study with young autistic children (N = 17).

Results: This adapted measure, the Early Communication Indicator–Autism (ECI-A), captured a range of scores for the ECI, Initiation of Joint Attention, and Directed Communication in pilot testing. Interrater reliability was moderate to strong across the scored behaviors. Finally, parents were able to administer the ECI-A with high fidelity with support from the research staff.

Conclusions: This two-phase pilot study demonstrated promise for the ECI-A as a brief measure of social communication that can be administered by parents and reliably scored by trained staff with limited background in autism assessments. Validation of the ECI-A is presently underway.

Supplemental Material S1. Early Communication Indicator–Autism: Initiating joint attention and directed communication coding.

Nowell, S., Steinbrenner, J. R., Wallisch, A., Salley, B., McGovern, J., McGauley, S., Watson, L. R., Irvin, D., Buzhardt, J., & Boyd, B. (2024). Adapting the Early Communication Indicator as a social communication outcome measure for young autistic children: A pilot study. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 33(5), 2610–2617. https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_AJSLP-24-00004