Exploring communicative competence in autistic children who are minimally verbal: The Low Verbal Investigatory Survey for Autism (LVIS).

Researchers created a simple 5-minute survey called LVIS to help understand how children with autism who don't speak much are still communicating. Many autistic children use fewer than 20 words, but this doesn't tell us how they communicate in other ways. The survey, completed by 147 parents, helps capture these other communication skills and relates well to the child's overall abilities. This tool could help families and professionals better understand a child's communication strengths.

This study developed and validated the Low Verbal Investigatory Survey for Autism (LVIS), a brief parent-report tool designed to assess communication abilities in minimally verbal autistic children. The LVIS addresses the lack of standardized definition for 'minimally verbal' and provides insight beyond simple word counts. Testing with 147 children aged 1-8 years demonstrated that the 5-minute survey effectively measures communicative competence in children with limited spoken language. The LVIS scores correlated appropriately with established measures of language, cognitive abilities, and autism symptomatology, suggesting it captures meaningful aspects of communication skills that extend beyond verbal output.

The LVIS could help clinicians make more informed intervention decisions for minimally verbal autistic children by capturing communication abilities beyond word count. This may improve identification of children who might benefit from alternative communication approaches versus those likely to develop spoken language naturally.

The abstract does not specify study methodology, participant characteristics beyond age range, or psychometric properties. No comparison to gold-standard assessments is mentioned. Long-term predictive validity and sensitivity to intervention changes are not reported.

Approximately one in three autistic children is unable to communicate with language; this state is often described as minimally verbal. Despite the tremendous clinical implications, we cannot predict whether a minimally verbal child is simply delayed (but will eventually develop spoken language) or will continue to struggle with verbal language, and might therefore benefit from learning an alternative form of communication. This is important for clinicians to know, to be able to choose the most helpful interventions, such as alternative forms of communication. In addition, the field lacks a standard definition of "minimally verbal." Even when we do agree on what the term means (e.g. fewer than 20 words), describing a child based on their lack of words does not tell us whether that child is communicating in other ways or how they are using those 20 words.

To address these concerns, we developed the Low Verbal Investigatory Survey (LVIS), a one-page parent-report measure designed to help us characterize how minimally verbal autistic childrencommunicating. Parents of 147 children (aged 1-8 years) completed the LVIS. Here, we ask (1) whether the survey measures what it was designed to measure, that is, communicative ability in children without much spoken language, and (2) how the LVIS relates to cognitive and language ability, and symptoms of autism. Results suggest that this survey, which takes only 5 min to complete, is a good estimate of the child's communication skills.

Furthermore, LVIS survey scores are correlated with other measures of language and cognitive abilities as well as autism symptomatology. The LVIS has the potential to save time and money in both clinical and research efforts to assess communication skills in minimally verbal autistic children.