Chatmongkol Chammak. A study of adaptive behavior of autistic children with vineland adaptive behavior scales (VABS) . Master's Degree(Clinical Psychology). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2004.
A study of adaptive behavior of autistic children with vineland adaptive behavior scales (VABS)
Abstract:
This descriptive research aimed to study the adaptive behaviors of autistic children in order to
understand the profile of their adaptive behaviors in each of the following domains: Communication, Daily
Living, Social and Motor Skills and to learn the correlation of the mean scores of the four domains. The
subjects were autistic children hospitalized as in-patients at Yuwaprasatwaitayopatham Hospital which were
divided into 4 groups:1. Autistic children below 10 years old without verbal skills; 2. Autistic children below
10 years old with some verbal skills; 3. Autistic individuals above 10 years old without verbal skills; 4. Autistic
individuals above 10 years old with some verbal skills. The inventory chosen for the study was Vineland
Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS), the Thai version Survey Form. Data collection was achieved by interview
with the parents or intimate caregivers of the autistic subjects. Data analyses included, Pearson Product
Moment Correlation Coefficient (r), One-Way Anova and Sceffe’s method.
This research found that the adaptive behavior scores of all domains correlate to one another at the
significance level of .01. The profile of the subject groups revealed that: the autistic children below 10 years
old with some verbal skills have the highest mean scores in Communication, Daily Living Skills, Socialization
and Adaptive Composite; the autistic individuals above 10 years old with verbal skills have the highest mean
scores in Motor Skills; the autistic individuals above 10 years old without verbal skills have the lowest mean
scores of adaptive behaviors in all the domains.
The result from this study suggests that VABS can’t clearly distinguish the verbal and non-verbal
groups of the autistic children so it is more suitable to apply with younger groups. VABS can be utilized in
conjunction with intelligence tests to assess autistic children, for it enables a broader perspective of their
abilities, knowledge of strong and weak points, planning of individual treatment and evaluation of training
progress in autistic children.