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Journal of Intellectual Disability Research
399
VOLUME 60 PART 5 pp 399–400 MAY 2016
Editorial
The intersection of autism spectrum disorder and
intellectual disability
Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas
must use old buildings. *
Such is the gist of this Special Issue of JIDR on
autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the first ever for the
journal. In seeking papers that addressed the
intersection of both ASD and intellectual disability
(ID), we were struck by the importance of drawing
together the best of both fields. We found that
autism-specific instruments and traditional thinking
were not always the most accurate for researching
populations with ID. Similarly, traditional thinking
about developmental constructs in ID, such as in the
area of language, could not adequately describe the
unique and often uneven profiles in autism.
It is interesting that ID is a very common
co-morbid disorder with ASD, yet the field over the
last decade or two has paid little attention to this fact
(Lecavalier, Snow & Norris, 2011), although the
definition of ASD in DSM 5 (APA, 2013) may
catalyse research in this area. We do know that in a
sample of 13-year-old adolescents with ASD whose
IQs fell across the spectrum, IQ did not serve as a
protective factor for clinically significant behaviour
problems or mental health disorders. Yet, same-aged
individuals with ID had three times the risk of
developing mental health disorders over typically
developing adolescents (Baker & Blacher, 2015).
While co-morbidity of ASD and ID does not
characterise all of the papers in this Special Issue, as
we had hoped, most of the papers do present either
new ideas or utilise new approaches to the study of
ASD.
Thus, the papers accepted herein reflect three
broad areas: 1) assessment, where the architecture of
developmental theory holds up; 2) language, where
researchers grapple with using traditional language
*Johnson, S. (2010). Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural
History of Innovation. London: Penguin Publishing Group.
© 2016 MENCAP and International Association of the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and
John Wiley & Sons Ltd
doi: 10.1111/jir.12294
approaches to study children with ASD and ID; and
3) social context, which in many ways is the ultimate
landscape for studying children with this co-morbid
disorder. We provide an overview of this Special Issue
as follows.
Broadening the assessment of ASD. With the now
accepted increase in the prevalence of ASD, researchers
and professionals are in need of better and briefer
instruments for autism screening and assessment. The
Bayley Scales of Infant Development have long been
useful for cognitive and language assessment of young
typically developing children before age 3; the
instrument is well-known, psychometrically sound and
requires training for its administration. In Assessment of
cognition and language in the early diagnosis of autism
spectrum disorder: Usefulness of the Bayley Scales of Infant
and Toddler Development (3rd Ed.), Montserrat Torras-
Mañá and colleagues evaluated the predictive validity
of an earlier administered Bayley at age 4 for Spanish
children who had a confirmed ASD diagnosis. At the
other end of the developmental spectrum, the article by
Charlotte Mutsaerts and colleagues, Screening for ASD
in adults with ID: Moving toward a standard using the
DiBAS-R and the ACL, indicated improved sensitivity
and specificity using two screening instruments for
more accurate assessment of autism in adults co-
morbid with ID.
Language processes and outcomes. Four papers in this
Special Issue focus more specifically on aspects of
language, an area of concern especially in early
childhood for children with both ASD and ID.
Assessing and understanding the language profiles of
children with ASD – with or without ID – have long
challenged researchers, and Alexandra Key and
colleagues addressed these issues in Consonant
differentiation mediates the discrepancy between nonverbal
and verbal abilities in children with ASD. Two papers
examined effects of early intervention on language
outcomes. Lauren Hampton and Ann Kaiser
reviewed literature in Early intervention effects on
 Journal of Intellectual Disability Research
400
• Editorial
spoken-language outcomes for children with autism: A
systematic review and meta-analysis, and suggest that
more thorough reporting of critical variables affecting
language intervention studies implemented by
parents and/or therapists in ASD would better move
the field forward. Veronica Rose and colleagues
examined the language outcomes of a large cohort of
children with ASD in community intervention,
comparing definitions for ‘minimally verbal’ in The
proportion of minimally verbal children with autism
spectrum disorder in a community-based early intervention
program. Finally, a more nuanced approach to the
study of imitation in children with ASD is provided by
Mikael Heimann and colleagues in Children with
autism respond differently to spontaneous, elicited, and
deferred imitation.
Family and social context. In recognition of the
growing literature pertaining to families of children
and adults with ASD, the paper by Meghan Burke
and Tamar Heller, Individual, parent, and
social-environmental correlates of caregiving experiences
among parents of adults with autism spectrum disorder,
offers links between findings about the impact of
adults with ASD and public policy. Importantly,
the findings indicate that future planning for one’s
adult offspring is related to one’s current caregiving
satisfaction, which appears to be more influenced
by the target adult’s health and maladaptive
behaviours than the ID. Liezl Schlebusch and
colleagues provide a rich description of family
routines in households with a young child with
ASD in their paper, South African families raising
children with autism spectrum disorder: Relationship
between family routines, cognitive appraisal, and family
quality of life. They found that the relationship
between the family routines and family quality of
life was partially accounted for by parent appraisal
of the impact of the child with ASD.
Two papers addressed issues of service delivery.
Sandra Magaña and colleagues, in Functional severity
and Latino ethnicity in specialty services for children with
autism spectrum disorder, explored the issue of equity in
service delivery. Using multivariate linear and logistic
regression models, the authors determined from
© 2016 MENCAP and International Association of the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and
John Wiley & Sons Ltd
VOLUME 60 PART 5 MAY 2016
secondary analyses of a large national dataset that
Latino children with severe limitations (ID) received
fewer targeted autism services than white non-Latino
children with similarly severe limitations. Azin Taheri
and colleagues, in Examining the social participation of
children with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum
disorder in relations to peers, considered the social
context of peers and community activities in a large
Canadian sample of children and youth who were
typically developing (TD), or who had ID or ASD
+ ID. Although the youth with ID or ASD + ID had
fewer opportunities for socialisation and fewer friends
than the TD group, those with ASD + ID had
significantly fewer school friends than did the ID
group, suggesting that these children may be in the
greatest need for school-based social skills
intervention.
All in all, this first ever issue of JIDR devoted to
ASD and ID is but a beginning. We hope that it
inspires more work in this area and more cross-
fertilisation of researchers interested in both ID and
ASD.
Jan Blacher
Co-Editor, JIDR Special Issue on ASD
Connie Kasari
Co-Editor, JIDR Special Issue on ASD
References
American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and
statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.) Washington,
DC:Author.
Baker B. L. & Blacher J. (2015) Disruptive behavior
disorders in adolescents with ASD: comparison to youth
with intellectual disability or typical cognitive
development. Journal of Mental Health Research in
Intellectual Disabilities 8, 98–116.
Lecavalier L., Snow A. V. & Norris M. (2011) Autism
spectrum disorders and intellectual disability. In:
International Handbook of Autism and Pervasive
Developmental Disorders (eds J. L. Matson & P. Sturmey),
pp. 37–51. Springer, NY.