Effectiveness of Intensive Linguistic Intervention in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Case Study

Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is currently classified as a neurodevelopmental disorder with increasing prevalence year by year. One of the key characteristics of this population is the persistent and variable difficulty they present in the development of functional language. For this reason, most individuals with ASD are candidates for linguistic treatment, especially during the early stages of development. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of an individualized and intensive oral language and communication intervention. Method: This research was conducted through a case study of a 5-year-old Spanish-speaking child diagnosed with ASD. The child's family sought intensive speech therapy to address articulation difficulties that were affecting speech intelligibility. However, a linguistic intervention program was proposed that would cover work in all areas of language. A comprehensive assessment of the child's language and communication skills was carried out by a team of five professionals. Following this, an individualized intervention was implemented for 27 h per week over a period of 4 weeks. After this period, the child's linguistic skills were reassessed. Results: The results show that the proposed intervention not only improved articulation skills. Conclusion: It is important to conduct a detailed analysis of each case and design individualized interventions that directly impact the effectiveness of treatments.