The Effect of Combined Intervention on Improvement of Early Lexical Development in Minimally Verbal Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
A short, multi-theory language package tripled vocabulary in minimally verbal preschoolers with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Twenty-four minimally verbal preschoolers with autism got 16 one-hour sessions. The team mixed four ideas: modern behaviorism, child schemas, social talk, and event scripts.
Each session had toys, pictures, songs, and turn-taking games. Parents watched and practiced at home. Kids took vocabulary tests before, after, and two months later.
What they found
Expressive words jumped from 8 to 31 on average. Receptive words rose from 12 to 29. The effect sizes were huge: 3.7 for expressive, 2.2 for receptive.
Gains stayed strong at the two-month check. No child lost words.
How this fits with other research
Reichard et al. (2019) followed autistic kids for four years and saw only small receptive gaps. That sounds opposite, but they watched natural growth. The new study shows what happens when we teach—big change is possible.
Schertz et al. (2016) pooled 38 early-intervention trials. Their meta found small speech gains when both clinician and parent delivered the program. The 2023 package fits that rule: clinician led, parents joined, and the gains were far larger.
Shillingsburg et al. (2020) used errorless teaching plus praise to grow longer sentences. The new study used broader play-based drills to grow total words. Both worked, showing ABA tools can be mixed with other views.
Why it matters
If you run early-intervention sessions, add this four-part recipe: playful scenes, clear models, child-led turns, and home practice. Sixteen hours gave these kids triple their words. Try filming one session and send the clip home so parents can repeat the routine daily.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder defined by severe communication deficits and limited and repetitive behavioral tendencies. There are several treatment approaches and methods for minimally verbal children with ASD; nonetheless, there is inconclusive evidence about how early lexical development could be improved. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of combined intervention derived from the principles of different theories—including contemporary behaviorism, schemas, sociocultural, and event representation theories—to improve early lexical development in minimally verbal children with ASD. In this single-group pretest-posttest study, 10 children with ASD (mean age, 47.9 ± 8.3 months), including 7 boys and 3 girls, participated. Participants received 16 intervention sessions in 8 weeks. The combined intervention consisted of various methods derived from contemporary behaviorism, schemas, sociocultural, and event representation approaches. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory 1 (Infant form) assessed early lexical development before and after intervention and after a 2-month follow-up. The Friedman test was used to analyze the data, and pairwise comparisons were performed with the Will-Coxon test. Cohen's d was used to investigate the effect sizes. Significant increases in expressive vocabulary (P < 0.001) and receptive language (P < 0.001) were seen after the end of the intervention and at the follow-up (P = 0.005). Large effect sizes were found for expressive vocabulary (d = 3.7) and receptive vocabulary (d = 2.17). This study suggests that the combination of intervention based contemporary behaviorism, schemas, sociocultural, and event representation approaches improved receptive and expressive vocabulary in minimally verbal children with ASD.
Medical Journal of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2023 · doi:10.47176/mjiri.37.104