Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are typified by impaired social-communication skills. Children and adolescents with ASD have difficulty understanding, interacting and relating with others.
New research suggests intensive therapy, especially at early ages, can help children achieve the best outcomes.
The intensive therapy helps children with autism improve social and communication skills, say the leaders of a current study.
Researchers reviewed data from more than 1,000 children and adolescents with ASD. The investigators focused on changes demonstrated for social-communication skills including facial expressions, gestures, language comprehension, sharing enjoyment and appropriate social responses.
Over time, a striking majority (95.4 percent) of children demonstrated improvement for these skills with children who had received behavioral, speech and occupational therapy benefitting the most. The response to therapy was greatest among those with higher nonverbal IQs.
Analysis showed that when age and symptom severity were controlled, children who received more intensive treatment at younger ages experienced greater advancements in social-communication symptoms.
“With regard to social-communicative symptom severity, our study reveals that it is not IQ alone that contributes to improvements over time,” Mazurek said.
For those children who were nonverbal at age 5, the researchers found that IQ and intensity of speech therapy most significantly predicted the acquisition of speech. The findings indicate that targeted, intensive treatments may be most successful in improving specific skills.