Wellspring runs a blog where they frequently publish ineresting issues on autism and applied behavior analysis, both for families and professionals.
In their most recent blog post they have published some good tips for parents, so I stongly recommend visiting their blog, Wellspring blog
Boyd, Odom, Humphreys and Sam have published a special article in this issue of Journal of Early Intervention discussing early warning signs for autism spectrum disorders and highlights appropriate focused interventions and comprehensive treatment models.
In their discussion of early warnings signs the authors provides a comprehensive review of research done in the field of early signs of autism and autism spectrum disorder. And in this discussion also highlights some of the most widely used screening tools, and diagnostic tools.
In their exploration of interventions for infants and toddlers with autism spectrum disorders, they build on current knowledge on evidence based practice for preschool children with ASD, but highlights the interventions designed or explicitly adapted for infants and toddlers with ASD.
The authors conclude by pointing out the challenges of lack of scientific data on interventions for infants and toddlers, and points out that while additional interventions emerge, professionals should use their wisdom in selecting and adopting interventions effective for older children with autism spectrum disorders.
The great free resource to applied behavior analysis and language, The Journal of Speech -Language Pathology and Applied Behavior Analysis has published a new issue. As all other issues this is free, and can be downloaded from the BAO website.
This issue contains some really interesting articles, and are a must for all dealing with language and behavior analysis.
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.
Odom, Boyd, Hall and Hume have published an evaluation of comprehensive treatment models (CMT) for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In this evaluation they have evaluated multiple dimensions. And they found thirty CTMs were identified, most from the Behavior Analytic framework.
The evaluation method in this study were based on standards for meta-evaluation, and consisted of sic evaluation features; operationalization, implementation measures, replication, type of empirical evidence, quality of the research methodology and complementary evidence from studies of focused interventions. This features were scored by a rating scale (0-5).
This study gives a thorough analysis of factors of CMTs and will be useful in planning and selecting treatment models for individuals with ASD, adding to other reports and studies, as National Autism Centers report.