The Rimland E-2 Assessment of Autism: Its Relationship with other Measures

Although theE-2 Scale (Rimland, 1971) is widely used to assess the extent to which abnormal children approximate Kanner’s syndrome (classical autism), the E-2 has not been correlated with any established psychometric test (Rimland, 1979). Controversial findings that may imply that autism is a unique clinical entity have been reported with respect to the E-2’s correlation with biochemical variables (cf. Boullin, Coleman, O’Brien, & Rimland, 1971; Rimland, 1976). Other investigators, however, have not replicated these findings, and, more pertinently, the E-2’s relationship to psychometric variables that are generally assumed to be diagnostically and prognostically important has not been examined. The present article reports the E-2’s correlations with three such variables: assessments of intelligence, social competence, and language functioning.