Autism – intensive therapy at young age is beneficial
The Autism News | English
Adolescents and children with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have difficulty in understanding, interacting and relating with others. Impaired social-communication skills are typical in individuals with ASD.
New research suggests that intensive therapy can help children achieve the best outcomes, especially when it is given at an early age.
The leaders of the current study say that the intensive therapy helps children with autism improve social and communication skills.
Researchers reviewed data from more than a thousand children and adolescents with ASD. They focused on changes demonstrated for social-communication skills. These changes included facial expressions, gestures, sharing enjoyment, language comprehension and appropriate social responses.
‘It is important for children with autism to begin treatment as soon as possible. The more intense or comprehensive the therapy, the better it is in terms of helping children improve social and communication skills,’ said clinical psychologist Dr. Micah Mazurek, assistant professor in the Department of Health Psychology at the University of Missouri.
Over time 95.4% of children demonstrated improvement for these skills with children who have received behavioural, speech and occupational therapy benefitting the most. The best response to therapy was experienced by those with higher nonverbal IQs.
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Comments
Rebecca says: This piece was good although I would have like to have had some statistics to go along with it. While I though it was good I am left with some unanswered questions. “At a young age” needs to be better defined. It would be hard for any parent to take this piece and use it as support for their arguement that their child would do better in situation B rather then situation A.
