Implementation of the Early Start Denver Model in an Italian community

Abstract

Identifying effective, community-based specialized interventions for young children with autism spectrum disorder is an international clinical and research priority. We evaluated the effectiveness of the Early Start Denver Model intervention in a group of young children with autism spectrum disorder living in an Italian community compared to a group of Italian children who received treatment as usual. A total of 22 young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder received the Early Start Denver Model in a center-based context for 6 h per week over 6 months. The Early Start Denver Model group was compared to a group of 70 young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder who received treatment as usual for an average of 5.2 h over 6 months. Children in both groups improved in cognitive, adaptive, and social skills after 3 months and 6 months of treatment. Children in the Early Start Denver Model group made larger gains in cognitive and social skills after 3 and 6 months of treatment. The Early Start Denver Model group made larger gains in adaptive skills after 3 months of treatment. Our results are discussed in terms of implications for intervention research and clinical practice. Our study supports the positive impact of the Early Start Denver Model in a non-English-speaking community.

A Two-Stage Screening Approach with I-TC and Q-CHAT to Identify Toddlers at Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder within the Italian Public Health System

“…This model had an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) of 90.7% and a cut-off could be chosen with 100% sensitivity and 72% specificity ( Figure 2). At 18 months, the bivariate logistic regression analysis allowed us to identify 17 Q-CHAT items that were significantly associated to positivity to ASD or BAP (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,14,15,16,17,19, 20, 23 and 25; p < 0.05). Again, starting from these items, we carried out a multivariate logistic regression adopting a stepdown procedure and obtained a model with 4 significantly associated items: item 10 ("Does your child follow where you're looking?…”

“…Clear evidence exists that early detection and early intervention can lead to a better prognosis [2][3][4]. According to the latest revision of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines about promoting optimal development in infants and young children, the early identification of developmental disorders should be conducted through developmental surveillance and periodic screening at each pediatric health visit [5].…”

The Effects of Early Intervention Programs on the Social Communication Skills of Young Children with Autism: A Systematic Review

“…Both behavioral and developmental strategies were utilized together in three of these studies as Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) to improve social, cognitive, and behavioral skills for preschool children with ASD (Colombi et al, 2018;Vivanti et al, 2014), both studies showed that both groups demonstrated improvements in the targeted skills but ESDM groups achieved higher gains compared to control groups. Further, Joint Attention Symbolic Play Engagement and Regulation (JASPER) model were used to improve the social communication skills, and the study demonstrated significant improvement over the waitlist group in domains of gestures and language joint attention and joint engagement (Chang et al, 2016).…”

“…There were limitations in the analyzed studies: some studies limited to one category of ASD or use small sample size (Barber et al, 2016;Radley et al, 2015Radley et al, , 2017Ventola et al, 2014;Vivanti et al, 2014;Waugh & Peskin, 2015;Chang et al, 2016). Besides, some studies did not have a control group (Barber et al, 2016;Radley et al, 2015Radley et al, , 2017Reis et al, 2018;Ventola et al, 2014;Fava et al, 2011;Colombi et al, 2018), or not randomly assigned (Zachor & Ben Itzchak, 2010;Waugh & Peskin, 2015). Furthermore, participants in some study were receiving other intervention or services besides the implementation of the intervention program (Reis et al, 2018), or the external factor e.g.…”

An Ecological Visual Exploration Tool to Support the Analysis of Visual Processing Pathways in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…Autism is characterized by developmental difficulties in communication, social interaction and behavioral flexibility, alongside highly repetitive stereotypical behaviors and/or restricted interests [3]. Identifying effective, community-based specialized interventions for young children with autism spectrum disorder is an international clinical and research priority [4]. There exists considerable phenotypic variation of ASD involving the pace of language development, the presence of epilepsy and the range of cognitive ability.…”