The Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) is another screening tool often used to evaluate young children who may be on the autism spectrum. It is specifically designed to help differentiate children with autism from children who are affected by other developmental disorders. The scale can be completed by a clinician, teacher, or parent, and the system rates children on a scale from one to four in fifteen different categories: (imitation, people relations, body movement, relation to non-human objects, emotional triggers, acceptance to change, visual response, listening response, verbal communication, non-verbal communication, anxiety reaction, their senses, level of activity, general impressions, and intellectual functioning). The score of 1 for any of these categories means “normal for a child of that age; a score of 2 means, “mildly abnormal for a child of that age”; a score of 3 means, “moderately abnormal for a child of that age; and a score of 4 means, “severely abnormal for a child of that age.”

 

 

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Childhood Autism Rating Scale [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_Autism_Rating_Scale]