Hayward, Eikeseth, Gale and Morgan has assessed the progress in treatment for young children receiving intensive behavioral interventions published in Autism, Vol 13(6), 2009.
They have assessed the progress for children receiving two types of service provision; an intensive clinic based treatment model and an intensive parent managed treatment model. They found significant improvement with all children, and no significant difference between groups. This indication that the use of ABA is the source of the improvement.
The authors measured progress using standardized instruments for intellectual functioning (Bayley, WPPSI-R), Visual-spatial skills (Merrill-Palmer), language functioning (Reynell), adaptive behaviors (Vineland). Showing progress on a variety of development areas.
Link to the article; Hayward, D., Eikeseth, S., Gale, C. & Morgan, S. (2009). Assessing progress during treatment for young children with autism receiving intensive behavioural interventions. Autism, 13(6), 613-633
As diet treatment is a hot topic in autism, it´s great to see that the number of published research papers are raising. And now Mulloy, Lang, O´Reilly, Sigafoos, Lancioni and Rispoli has mad a Systematical review of the published research to be published in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Based on their review they recommend that:
such diets should only be implemented in the event a child with ASD experiences acute behavioral changes, seemingly associated with changes in diet, and/or medical professionals confirm through testing the child has allergies or food intolerances to gluten and/or casein.
Link to the article; Gluten-free and casein-free diets in the treatment of autism spectrum disorders: A systematic review
It´s common knowledge that failure to develop joint attention skills is one of the core deficits for children with autism, and there is a growing body of research addressing this issue, both in the behavioral literature and within other theoretical directions. This research has been successful in establishing response to joint attention, but establishing a flexible and relevant repertoire of initiations to joint attentions has shown to be a greater challenge.
Jones (2009) has in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders published two studies on establishing initiations to joint attention. One addressing the form, and one addressing the stimulus classes.
The first study teached children with autism increasingly more sophisticated forms of joint attention behaviors. Starting with gaze alternating, then gaze alternating and pointing and finally gaze alternating, pointing and verbalization. These skills were established with already established teaching methods outlined in other studies. The second study teached children with autism to respond to more stimuli and to both adults and peers.
These studies shows the possibility to teach an increasingly more sophisticated class of responses, and expand the range of stimuli that occasion joint attention, and adding to the behavioral literature on joint attention. These studies includes two children, calling for more research on this subject.
The ability to initiate and maintain conversation is one of the core impairments for persons with autism spectrum disorders, and effective teaching procedures for establishing these skills for persons with autism spectrum disorders may increase the ability to participate in social interaction and contribute an increase in the quality of life for those who learn to master the skills.
Dotson et al (2009) has investigated teaching conversational skills in a group format for adolescents on the autism spectrum using the teaching interaction procedure. This procedure involves; describing the target behavior, why the behavior should be used, when it should be used and the steps involved in the behavior. Then the teachers model the behavior, and the learner gets to role-play - rehearsal. And through the teaching process the learner receives positive feedback.
Teaching conversational skills in a group format may have several advantages as the authors points out; the possible effect of observational learning, efficiency, generalization effect of similar stimuli.
This study found that this format was effective in establishing the skills for adolescents with ASD, but none of the participants fully generalized all skills, but only partial generalization.
Reference
Dotson, W.H. et al. Group teaching of conversational skills to adolescents on the autism spectrum. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders (2009), doi: 10.1016/j.rasd.2009.09.005
The positive effects of task interspersal has been demonstrated several times over quite some years, and in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 3, 2009, Benavides and Polson has published yet another study showing the effects of task interspersal on the performance of matching-to-sample taks by three children with autisme.
In this study they found an increase in the percentage of correct responding on matching tasks, and adding to the growing body of demonstrations of the effect. They also found that the increase in correct responding remained when the reinforcer density was reverted to baseline levels.
Link to the article: Benavides, C.A., & Pulson, C.L. (2009). Task interpsersal and performance of matching task by preschoolers with autism. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 3, 619-629
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