New directions in behavioral treatment of autism spectrum disorders
In the recent issue of Current Opinion in Neurology Conni Kasari and Kathy Lawton has published a review that explores current trends in the behavioral intervention literature for children with ASD. The review focuses on the literature published during 2008 and 2009.
The authors identified 68 studies in their search and found that recent studies include mor randomized trails and group desings, even if the majority design still is single-subject designs. With regards of what the studies and treatments targeted, over half focused on ameliorating social impairments, only six studies were comprehensive interventions.
The authors points out that this review seems to reveal more positive outcomes in social skills for children with ASD, but they also makes it clear that the fact that many studies lack data on generalization, one may be teaching and training form or topography and not function.
Among the results reviewed on communication interventions the article describes an interesting finding of the effect of joint attention intervention, especially for children who were minimally verbal. This result are not surprisingly to practitioners, but as the article also points out; one of the positive trends are that many widely used interventions now seems to undergo more rigorous research.
The article also holds out the positive study on interventions for toddlers with autism I previously have mentioned on this site.
It´s a great review giving some excellent points for future research.
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