Longitudinal Follow-Up of Children With Autism Receiving Targeted Interventions on Joint Attention and Play

Abstract

Objective This study examines the cognitive and language outcomes of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) over a five -year period after receiving targeted early interventions that focused on joint attention and play skills. Method Forty children from the original study (n = 58) had complete data at the five year follow up. Results 80% of children had achieved functional use of spoken language with baseline play level predicting spoken language at the five -year follow- up. Of children who were using spoken language at age eight years, several baseline behaviors predicted their later ability, including earlier age of entry into the study, initiating joint attention skill, play level, and assignment to either the joint attention or symbolic play intervention group. Only baseline play diversity predicted cognitive scores at age eight. Conclusions This study represents one of the only long term follow up studies of children who participated in preschool early interventions aimed at targeting core developmental difficulties. The study findings suggest that focusing on joint attention and play skills in comprehensive treatment models is important for long term spoken language outcomes.

Using Spoken Language Benchmarks to Characterize the Expressive Language Skills of Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…At follow-up, 80% of the children had achieved functional use of spoken language. In addition, the group that received joint attention intervention gained 12.5 expressive language standard score points above the control group (Kasari, Gulsrud, Freeman, Paparella, & Hellemann, 2012). These findings suggest that general joint attention skills rather than joint attention and social motivation are critical for early language learning.…”

Randomized controlled trial of parental responsiveness intervention for toddlers at high risk for autism

“…These core deficits in young children at high risk for ASD are arguably difficult to improve. However, when these core areas of development are improved in children with confirmed diagnoses of ASD, language outcomes are significantly improved suggesting they are important targets of early interventions (Kasari et al, 2008(Kasari et al, , 2012. Thus, the current intervention likely did not provide enough direct targeting of these core areas of development to precipitate improvement.…”

“…The amount of community-based intervention that children receive varies across the United States, both in dose and type of services offered. Additional non-project services are important to document as they have sometimes affected the outcomes of research interventions (e.g., Rogers et al, 2012) and other times have not (Kasari, Paparella, Freeman, & Jahromi, 2008;Kasari, Gulsrud, Wong, Kwon, & Locke, 2010;Kasari, Gulsrud, Freeman, Paparella, & Hellemann, 2012).…”

Intervenções Comportamentais no Ensino de Atenção Conjunta para Crianças com Autismo: Uma revisão de literatura

“…Alguns estudos longitudinais, não incluídos nessa revisão (e.g. Kasari, Paparella, Freeman, & Jahromi, 2008;Kasari, Gulsrud, Freeman, Paparella, & Hellemann, 2012;Morales et al, 2000;Whalen et al 2006), mostraram efeitos positivos da aquisição de AC no desenvolvimento da linguagem e de outras habilidades sociais. Esses resultados oferecem suporte à hipótese de que a habilidade de AC é uma cúspide comportamental (behavioral cusp -ver Rosales-Ruiz & Baer, 1997) que permite o desenvolvimento de repertórios mais avançados (Greer & Ross, 2008).…”