Early diagnosis of autism typically is associated with earlier access to intervention and improved outcomes. Daycares and preschools largely have been ignored as possible venues for early identification. This may be especially important for minority children in the United States who are typically diagnosed with autism later than White children, limiting their access to early specialized interventions and possibly resulting in poorer outcomes. Early childcare providers within underserved communities completed autism screening tools for a sample of low-risk young children (n = 967) in their programs. Early childcare providers returned screening tools for 90% of the children for whom parental consent had been received. A total of 14% of children screened positive for autism spectrum disorder and 3% of the sample met criteria for autism spectrum disorder. Among those who screened positive, 34% were lost to follow-up. Findings suggest that early childcare providers can effectively screen young children for autism spectrum disorder in preschool/daycare settings, thus improving access to early diagnosis and reducing potential healthcare disparities among underserved populations.

From birth, infants are exposed to a wealth of emotional information in their interactions. Much research has been done to investigate the development of emotion perception, and factors influencing that development. The current study investigates the role of familiarity on 3.5-month-old infants' generalization of emotional expressions. Infants were assigned to one of two habituation sequences: in one sequence, infants were visually habituated to parental expressions of happy or sad. At test, infants viewed either a continuation of the habituation sequence, their mother depicting a novel expression, an unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, or an unfamiliar female depicting a novel expression. In the second sequence, a new sample of infants was matched to the infants in the first sequence. These infants viewed the same habituation and test sequences, but the actors were unfamiliar to them. Only those infants who viewed their own mothers and fathers during the habituation sequence increased looking. They dishabituated looking to maternal novel expressions, the unfamiliar female's novel expression, and the unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, especially when sad parental expressions were followed by an expression change to happy or to a change in person. Infants are guided in their recognition of emotional expressions by the familiarity of their parents, before generalizing to others.

Children with autism spectrum disorder from low-income, minority families or those with limited English proficiency are diagnosed at a later age, or not at all, compared with their more advantaged peers. The Developmental Check-In is a new tool that could potentially be used to screen for autism that uses pictures to illustrate target behaviors. It was developed to enhance early identification of autism spectrum disorder in low literacy groups. The Developmental Check-In was tested in a sample of 376 children between the ages of 24 and 60 months, from underserved communities. It showed good ability to discriminate autism spectrum disorder from non-autism spectrum disorder (area-under-the-curve = 0.75) across the full age range represented in the sample. Twenty-six of the 28 Developmental Check-In items predicted the presence of autism spectrum disorder. Findings suggest that this pictorial tool may reduce linguistic and health literacy demands when screening for autism among vulnerable populations.