Development of communicative-linguistic and adaptive skills in children with autism spectrum disorder after six months of treatment
Jessica Barsotti, Roberta Nencioli, Lucia Pfanner, Angela Cosenza, Raffaella Tancredi, Sara Calderoni, Filippo Muratori, Antonio Narzisi
In this study we investigated the effectiveness of six months of treatment-as-usual (TAU) on communicative-linguistic and adaptive skills of 70 children with autism spectrum disorder from five Italian regions. Specifically, we investigated: (1) the effectiveness of the treatment on communicative-linguistic and adaptive skills, subdividing the children on the basis of their level of development; (2) the outcome predictors of communicative-linguistic skills; (3) the effectiveness of treatments which provide interventions aimed at the development of communicative-linguistic skills versus treatments that do not provide similar interventions. The results showed (1) a communicative-linguistic and adaptive enhancement in children with higher levels of development; (2) level of development, adaptive functioning and severity of autistic symptoms are significant predictors of outcome of linguistic-communicative skills. Finally we found that (3) after 6 months, TAU which includes treatments aimed at the development of communicative-linguistic skills has an increased effectiveness on adaptive communication skills (measured by the Vineland II communication scale) in children with higher developmental levels.
Keywords
Autism, language, early treatment, outcome, pre-schoolers.