Effectiveness of a home program intervention for young children with autism.
Parents using a TEACCH home program for four months produced big developmental jumps for preschoolers with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers asked parents to run a TEACCH home program for preschoolers with autism.
The team checked motor, imitation, and thinking skills after four months.
They compared the kids to a group that got no extra help.
What they found
Children in the TEACCH group made large gains.
Their motor, imitation, and non-verbal scores grew three to four times faster than the no-treatment group.
How this fits with other research
Aznar et al. (2005) later showed even larger gains with 25–40 hours of one-to-one ABA.
That study seems to clash, but it used more hours and a different method.
Reed et al. (2007) then proved 30 hours of home ABA beats 12, backing the dose idea.
Panerai et al. (2002) kept the same TEACCH ideas, yet ran them at school instead of home.
Together, the papers say: parents can teach at home, but more hours and earlier start help most.
Why it matters
You can give families a ready-made TEACCH home kit today.
Coach parents to work in daily routines like meals and bath time.
Track motor and imitation targets each week.
If progress stalls, boost hours or blend in ABA drills shown in later studies.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This project evaluated the effectiveness of a TEACCH-based home program intervention for young children with autism. Parents were taught how to work with their preschool autistic child in the home setting, focusing on cognitive, academic, and prevocational skills essential to later school success. To evaluate the efficacy of the program, two matched groups of children were compared, a treatment group and a no-treatment control group, each consisting of 11 subjects. The treatment group was provided with approximately 4 months of home programming and was tested before and after the intervention with the Psychoeducational Profile-Revised (PEP-R). The control group did not receive the treatment but was tested at the same 4-month interval. The groups were matched on age, pretest PEP-R scores, severity of autism, and time to follow-up. Results demonstrated that children in the treatment group improved significantly more than those in the control group on the PEP-R subtests of imitation, fine motor, gross motor, and nonverbal conceptual skills, as well as in overall PEP-R scores. Progress in the treatment group was three to four times greater than that in the control group on all outcome tests. This suggests that the home program intervention was effective in enhancing development in young children with autism.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1998 · doi:10.1023/a:1026006818310