The findings in new study from the University of Washington show that intensive therapy for very young children with autism spectrum disorder appears to have lasting results. The study’s authors say this makes a strong case for targeted intervention where there is an early diagnosis.
The report will be published next month in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Researchers looked at two groups of children with autism spectrum disorder who were between 18 and 30 months old when they started therapy. Each group started out with 24 children.
One cohort received a mix of traditional treatments such as speech therapy and developmental preschool for two years. The other group of children spent that time working with therapists and parents one on one for 15 hours each week.
What looked like an adult and young child playing and laughing together, was actually a targeted effort to improve that child’s ability to communicate. Annette Estes, the study’s lead author and the director of UW’s Autism Center, says a lot can go into a simple game of patty-cake.
“Within that game they’d be focused on these really specific goals that they’ve identified as where that child needs to be learning. So it might be that you want that child to start vocalizing or you might want that child to make eye contact to initiate continuing with the game,” says Estes.
The adult working with the child stopped every 15 minutes to write down whether the goals were being met. “And if not, after three days they’d try to refocus what they’re doing with the child so they can keep making progress,” says Estes.
This type of therapy is called the Early Start Denver Model, or ESDM. The children who received it showed better communication skills two years after the play sessions ended than the group that got more traditional help.
Two of the children in the ESDM group were no longer on the autism spectrum by the time they were six years old. Estes says the study highlights the importance of targeted intervention when kids are very young and are not so different from their more typically developing peers.
Estes and her team plan to follow these children as they grow older to record any positive long term effects of the work that was done when the children were toddlers. Most are now 10 years old.
