What are the best ways to assess pain in people with communication and sensory disorders?
• Phenotypic measures ought to include not only diagnostic and psychometric information but also behavioral indices of perceptual function, attentional focus and shifting, executive function, and social cognition in the same individual subjects, rather than in separate studies with subject pools in which measures cannot be correlated. Behavioral tasks must have ecological validity and must whenever possible be presented in an event-driven format rather than a timed format, one that can accommodate variation in subjects’ pace of responding. Points of convergence or “final common pathways” may occur at all levels of analysis, from genetic networks to abnormal learned behaviors and cognitive strategies. • There needs to be a way to clinically screen/diagnose for different types of autism, such as the Neruodevelopmental Disorders of Relating and Communicating described in the DMIC. • Research is needed that provides state of the art assessment tools to determine levels of functioning for i
