Cognitive, behavior and intervention outcome in young children with autism.
IQ and stereotypy can improve in autistic toddlers after one intensive year, and low baseline IQ does not block progress.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ben Itzchak et al. (2008) tracked autistic toddlers for one year of intensive day-program intervention.
They also enrolled children with general developmental delay to see if gains were autism-specific.
Kids took IQ tests and autism rating scales at intake and 12 months later.
What they found
Autistic children gained more IQ points than the DD group.
Stereotyped behaviors like hand-flapping also dropped.
Surprise: baseline IQ level did not predict who made symptom progress.
How this fits with other research
Rodgers et al. (2021) pooled 491 preschoolers and found the same average IQ lift after two years of ABA.
Eldevik et al. (2010) later showed even larger IQ jumps in toddlers with intellectual disability alone, proving low scores are not a ceiling.
Levin et al. (2014) followed similar kids for three years and saw the advantage over eclectic care double—so one-year gains hold up.
Why it matters
You can tell parents that starting ABA before age three can raise IQ no matter the child’s starting score.
Keep tracking stereotypy; it may fade without a separate plan.
Use the 12-month mark to review goals, not to decide if treatment is working—bigger pay-offs may still be coming.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
UNLABELLED: The relations between cognition and autism severity, head size and intervention outcome, were examined. Change in cognitive level with intervention was measured in children with autism and compared to children with developmental disabilities (DD). Eighty-one children (mean age 25.9 months) with autism (n=44) and DD (n=37) were assessed at pre- and post 1 year of intervention. Cognitive abilities and autism severity were measured by standardized tests. Three pre-intervention cognitive level groups: normal (IQ>90), borderline (70<IQ<89) and impaired (50<IQ<69) were examined. The impaired group had more severe autism symptoms than the borderline and the normal cognitive groups. However, following intervention the groups did not differ in the change in core autism symptoms. IQ scores increased significantly more in the autism group than in the DD group. IQ improvements correlated significantly with reduction in autism symptoms and mostly in stereotyped behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: Cognitive ability in autism is associated with autism severity. Two distinct subtypes based on cognitive level are identified. However, baseline cognitive level cannot predict the progress rate in autism symptoms with intervention. Improvement of social-communicative behaviors and the intensive intervention are related to significant cognitive increments in autism.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2008 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2007.08.003