Reexamining Pathways Early Autism Intervention in Children Before and After the Third Birthday: A Randomized Control Trial

Overview

Journal J Autism Dev Disord

Publisher Springer

Date 2022 May 21

PMID 35596830

Authors

Pamela Rosenthal Rollins

Adrienne M De Froy

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

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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