IDENTIFICATION OF BEHAVIOR PROFILES WITHIN A POPULATION OF AUTISTIC-CHILDREN USING MULTIVARIATE STATISTICAL-METHODS

The Revised Behaviour Summarized Evaluation Scale (BSE-R) was develope d for the objective evaluation of autistic behaviours in order to faci litate the recording of the evolution of developmentally disabled chil dren. Among its 29 items, 13 items that precisely describe the degree of autistic behaviours were extracted by Principal Component Analysis. We hypothesised that these relevant behaviours could differentiate au tistic behaviour profiles in a population of children previously diagn osed as typically autistic. For this purpose, we used an original mult ivariate descriptive statistical approach, Correspondence Analysis, wh ich can help in detecting structural relationships among variables. In a population of autistic children initially diagnosed using DSM-III-R criteria, this procedure proved effective in identifying new main dim ensions of behaviours among the 13 previously defined core autistic sy mptoms. Cluster analysis, which followed factorial analysis, allowed t he identification of three meaningful behaviour profiles separated pri ncipally on the basis of two main functions, perception and imitation, which have been always considered to be fundamentally involved in aut istic syndrome. The individualisation of homogeneous subgroups of chil dren on the basis of the behavioural evaluation provides a potentially useful starting point for further biological and therapeutic studies.