The focus on evidence-based interventions and practices in educating and treatment of children with autism have been strong for some time, and there seems to create some debate between different educational approaches. And in this issue of Journal of Autism and other Developmental disorders there are published another contribution to this debate.
Gary Mesibov (the director of TEACCH) and Shea has published a paper named: The TEACCH Program in the Era of Evidence-Based Practices.
In this paper the authors discuss the concept of evidence-based practice and based on the definitions and principles given by APA (2006) and Kazdin (2008) they propose some core principles for evidence-based practices. In this principles and their discussion they focus on the use of other sources of evidence particullary clinical expertise which according to the authors “can be reflected in experience and professional reputation“.
This may pose some problems in evaluating and determining what constitutes evidence-based practices. It may contribute to broaden our knowledge on what is effective for children with autism. But the use of defined and replicable research designs will probably contribute in an other extent to valid and established knowledge.
Based on the authors concurrent of the broader definition of evidence-based practice which incorporates clinical expertise and flexibility, the authors argues that their approach, TEACCH, contributes to the evidence base of autism interventions.
It is strongly agreed upon the importance of early detection of autism spectrum disorders, as the early access to effective intervention and treatment dramatically can improve functioning and quality of life for children with autism and their families. In the recent years there has been conducted a significant number of studies focused on this issue. And in the most recent issue of Curren Opinions in Neurology, Zwaigenbaum has published an excellent and informative review of the research, called Advances in the early detection of autism.
Link to the abstract; Advances in the early detection of autism
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.
Koegel, Koegel, Green-Hopkins and Barnes have published a study on question-asking and collateral language acquisition in children with autism as a brief report in the latest issue of Journal of autism and other Developmental Disorders.
As the authors points out children with autism asks fewer questions than their peers, and teaching children with autism may have several benefits related to social interaction and linguistic competence, and also academic and social outcomes.
In this study they impelled teaching procedures to teach three children with autism to ask “where”-questions and prepositions and/or ordinal markers, by hiding preferred items and prompting the child to ask “Can you say, Where is it?”.
This study indicates that the important task of teaching children with autism to ask questions can be done by prompting questions and that this intervention also may lead to acquisition of corresponding language structures.
Link to the article http://www.springerlink.com/content/r684m68483g25017/fulltext.pdf