Reexamining Pathways Early Autism Intervention in Children Before and After the Third Birthday: A Randomized Control
Pamela Rosenthal Rollins1, Adrienne M De Froy2
1Callier Center for Communication Disorders, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, 1966 Inwood Road, Dallas, TX, 75235, USA. rollins@utdallas.edu.
Abstract:
We reexamined the efficacy of Pathways early autism intervention using generalized measures of social communication and language skills administered by an unfamiliar adult in a novel environment. Generalized measures improve on sources of measurement bias. Sixty-seven autistic children blocked on age (under versus over 3 years) were randomly assigned to 15 weeks of Pathways or services-as-usual. Age moderated the effects of Pathways for social communication. Specifically, Pathways had a significantly large effect for children under 3 and a small effect that approached significance for children over 3. Pathways also had a small effect on expressive speech/language skills. Results replicate previous findings of the efficacy of Pathways on proximal and distal skills and support the importance of early intervention.
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