Previous studies have targeted skills important to language development, but many only looked at small groups of children or infrequent treatment sessions, Kasari notes. Understanding what makes a treatment successful or not is vital. "We need to distill down the active ingredients in early intervention," she says, "then take these elements and match them to programs."

This kind of long-term follow-up is rare. "The study is important in terms of raising expectations of what can be accomplished, and in raising awareness of how much work it takes," says Sally J. Rogers, a psychiatry professor with the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis. Rogers, who was not involved in the research, emphasized that because the subjects were very young, the study builds on evidence indicating that the earlier the intervention the better—and children even younger than the toddlers in the original study could benefit. This has important pubic policy implications, she says, because there is little funding for children younger than three.

Finding a one-size-fits-all approach to helping autistic kids talk may be tricky, however: Autism affects each child differently, Rogers observes, and even the best interventions will have varied outcomes.
 

4 Comments

1. 1. amdachel 10:42 AM 7/17/12

   While it's important to do everything to help children with autism reach their full potential, we need to ask why so many children have problems with communication and social interaction. We have an autism rate of one in every 88 children, one in every 54 boys and no official knows why. There's nothing a mainstream doctor can tell a new mother so she can make sure her healthy baby doesn't also end up on the autism spectrum. And doctors can't explain why children who were developing normally suddenly and dramatically lose learned skills, stop talking and regress into autism.
   
   Thirty years ago, autism was rare. Today, we have an epidemic of affected children everywhere. We need to address why this is happening to our children.
   
   Anne Dachel, Media editor: Age of Autism

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2. 2. HydeTheJekyll in reply to amdachel 12:12 PM 7/17/12

   Rapid Human Evolution. It really is that simple. Thirty years ago the world was a very different place. Our human ability is to adapt. (The Cave Men of 50,000 years ago were not so different from us in there physiology. Socially and in there psychology the differences are massive. However, if you were to raise a 50,000 year old human baby in today's world there would be no discernible difference between it and us) In the past 30 years there has been numerous evolutionary leaps that mankind has taken, Thus the Human is adapting in various and complicated ways. Some of these adaptions are beneficial some not so much. For someone to understand what is happening they would first have to 'Understand what is happening'. Unfortunately the Humans of Yesterday may not be able to understand the Humans of today much less the Human of tomorrow.

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3. 3. DrBrocktagon 08:26 AM 7/18/12

   For anyone that can't access the paper, here are a few more details:
   
   Children were tested on the Expressive Vocabulary Test which I think at this level mainly involves naming pictures.
   
   Eight of the children were off the bottom of the scale.
   
   For the remaining 32 children, those who'd received one of the two interventions (joint attention or symbolic play) scored higher than those who hadn't received intervention. However, it made little difference which of the two interventions they received. The main limitation is that there were only 8 kids in this analysis in the no treatment group.

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4. 4. OATRC in reply to amdachel 02:00 AM 7/27/12

   There is not a soul on this Earth that will convince me otherwise. VACCINES are the cause of Autism. As a parent of a child with Autism, I blame Big Pharma as well as the doctors for allowing this to happen. The doctor can inform the mothers that they have a right to refuse the vaccines instead of forcing them down their throats and making them feel like a bad parent if they don't get them. When will people wake up and realize that vaccines are just a big money racket and it is at the expense of our children. VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM PERIOD!

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