Behavioral/Adaptive Rating Scale and Report

Identifying Information:
Child:
C
Middle
Date of Evaluation:
11/16/01
Chronological Age:

School: Oak Mountain

9/14/15

Date of Birth:

13 years and 9 months

Reason for Referral:

The reason for testing was to give this student practice with
administering and scoring a standardized assessment. The student
that was assessed is autistic and is in a self-contained classroom.
Knowing this student was autistic, I was curious where he fell on the
autism spectrum. I approached Dr. Finn about what behavioral
assessment I could use with this child and he suggested the CARS, The
Childhood Autism Rating Scale, because of his age and eligibility
criteria.

Background Information:
Student C is a bright young man. He enjoys learning about interesting
people from around the world and monster trucks. The student is in a
self-contained classroom with five other students with intellectual
disabilities.
Behavioral Observations:
The student often has a difficult time expressing his feelings to his
teachers. When he becomes frustrated, he screams, cries, pulls out his
hair, and rips his paper and throws it. The teachers are not able to help
the student unless he explicitly asks for the teachers to help complete
an activity. This student also has a difficult time interacting with his
peers. He has trouble making eye contact with peers and teachers. He
often obsesses over a certain object or fact about a person. Whatever
he decides to obsess over is what he chooses to talk about for the day.
Results and Impressions:

The CARS is split into fifteen different categories: relating to people,

imitation, emotional response, body use, object use, adaptation to
change, visual response, listening response, taste, smell, and touch
response and use, fear or nervousness, verbal communications,
nonverbal communication, activity level, level and consistency of
intellectual response, and general impressions. In each category, I
gave the student a score from 1-4 based on what I have observed in
class. After rating the student, I listed how I had seen this behavior
demonstrated in the classroom. I then tallied up all of the scores and
determined a total score of 31. Based on this total score, I determined
that this score makes the student fall in the range of being mildly
autistic-moderately autistic. I was honestly not surprised by these
results. I knew that this student was not severely autistic because he
does not demonstrate some of the characteristics that would
categorize him as being severely autistic such as animal like sounds
and ritualistic behaviors.
Recommendations:
Based on these results, I recommend that this student stay in the selfcontained environment. This type of environment really seems to
benefit the child and his behavior. I do not believe that he would
succeed academically in the general education classroom. I also
recommend the use of social stories to help this student overcome any
frustrations the day might meet.
Summary and Signature:
I gave the CARS assessment to student C. This student received a 31
on the assessment, which was based on observed behavior. Since the
child received a 31 on this assessment, the student may suffer from
mild to moderate autism.

Victoria Rivera