Predictors of outcomes in Autism Intervention: Why don’t we know more?

Abstract

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Response to early educational treatment programs in autism is variable. However the factors associated with positive versus poor treatment outcomes remain unknown. Hence the issue of which intervention/s should be chosen for an individual child remains a common dilemma. We argue that lack of knowledge on what works for whom and why in autism reflects a number of issues in current approaches to outcomes research, and we provide recommendations to address these limitations. These include: a theory-driven selection of putative predictors; the inclusion of proximal measures that are directly relevant to the learning mechanisms demanded by the specific educational strategies; and the consideration of family characteristics. Moreover, all data on associations between predictor and outcome variables should be reported in treatment studies.

Keywords

• autism
• individual differences
• individual variability
• Outcome
• Early Intervention
• predictors of response