Outcome of Home-Based Early Intervention for Autism in Sri Lanka: Follow-Up of a Cohort and Comparison with a Nonintervention Group
Home-based early ABA delivered large social-communication gains for Sri-Lankan toddlers, rivaling center care while fitting low-resource homes.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Perera et al. (2016) tested a home-based ABA program for toddlers with autism in Sri Lanka. Therapists visited homes and coached parents while teaching the child. A group of similar children got no therapy and served as a comparison.
The team tracked social and communication skills for six months.
What they found
Kids who got the home program made large, fast gains in eye contact, pointing, and talking. These gains stayed strong at six months. The no-therapy group improved only a little.
Home ABA beat natural development alone.
How this fits with other research
Schertz et al. (2016) pooled many early-ABA studies and also found small language gains, showing the Sri-Lanka result is part of a wider trend.
Eskow et al. (2015) ran a US Medicaid waiver version of in-home ABA and saw adaptive-skills gains, proving the model can scale in rich countries too.
Dixon et al. (2017) saw center-based ABA teach twice as many skills per hour as home-based ABA. This seems to clash with Perera’s glowing home results. The gap fades when you note Dixon studied older kids with stricter mastery criteria, while Perera tracked broad social growth in toddlers. Both papers agree: home ABA works; centers may simply work faster for some goals.
Why it matters
If you serve rural, low-resource, or transport-shy families, home ABA is a proven option that parents can run with your coaching. Start with social-communication targets, track them monthly, and keep parent sessions brisk. When families can reach a center, blend both settings for speedier skill gain.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This paper presents the outcome of a home-based autism intervention program (HBAIP) in 18- to 40-month-old children newly diagnosed and treatment naïve. Intervention was exclusively implemented at home. Outcome was measured at 3 months and 6 months after intervention and compared with a group of newly diagnosed children with autism who were >40 months at intake but had not received any autism specific clinical management. Aim was also to estimate whether natural development would contribute to gain in skills and compare with the effect of intervention. Five selected parameters of behavior representing social interaction and social communication were used to assess outcome. Results showed a statistically significant improvement between preintervention and postintervention in all the measured parameters. The effect size was large when compared to preintervention and gains were indicated by changes in mean scores and p values within a narrow confidence interval. Highest gains were in first 3 months of postintervention which continued up to 6 months. Although the comparison group was more advanced in the measured skills at intake, they were significantly below the level reached by experimental group at 3 months and 6 months after intervention. This study was registered in the Sri Lanka Clinical Trials Registry (SLCTR/2009/011).
BioMed Research International, 2016 · doi:10.1155/2016/3284087