Author: Paola Battista
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by Paola Battista, 04 Early Rahabilitative Intervention For Autism Spectrum Disorder Children A Two Years Longitudinal Study Books available in PDF, EPUB, Mobi Format. Download
04 Early Rahabilitative Intervention For Autism Spectrum Disorder Children A Two Years Longitudinal Study books, INTRODUCTIONAutism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) includes a group of developmental disabilities characterized by patterns of delay and deviance in the development of social, communicative, cognitive skills and the presence of repetitive and stereotyped behaviors as well as restricted interests. Early intervention is thought to begin before the age of five even if bestresults were reported for children who underwent the intervention before the age of three.AIM OF THE STUDYThe aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a personalized approach of the early rehabilitation treatment used by the u201cIl Cireneou201d Foundation on daily living functional abilities of children with Autism SpectrumDisorder after two years of continuously rehabilitative intervention.METHODSAutism spectrum disorder children were recruited at the u201cIl Cireneou201d Foundation for autism in Vasto, Italy. Fifteen patients (two females [13,3%] and thirteen males [86,7%], mean age=39,533 months; SD=6,8543) underwent a personalized rehabilitation program based on behavior therapy, neuro-psycho-motricity and speech therapy as international guidelines suggest, for two years. At the time of the enrollment, each child was younger than 48 months of age. Children were tested in two phases: before the treatment (T0) and after two years of the rehabilitative intervention (T1). The Childhood Autism Rating Scale, the PsychoEducational Profile Third Edition (PEP-3) and the Vineland Adaptative Behavior Scale (VABS) were used for the clinical assessment before and after the rehabilitation treatment. Every six months, patients were newly tested to better personalize the rehabilitative intervention depending on the progress made. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, version 13) program was used for the statistical analysis. The paired-samples t-test was used to highlight the differences between the preand post-treatment phases.SUMMARYAfter two years of personalized behavior treatment, u201cDaily Living Skillsu201d, u201cCommunicationu201d, u201cSocializationu201d, u201cMotor Skillsu201d subscales of VABS and u201cCommunicationu201d and u201cMaladaptive Behaviorsu201d subscales of PEP-3 showed a statistically significant improvement. On the other hand, u201cMotor Skillsu201d subscale of PEP-3 and CARS total scores werealso improved, but without a statistically significant effect.CONCLUSIONSEarly personalized rehabilitative intervention used by the u201cIl Cireneou201d Foundation proved to be effective on daily living functional abilities in autism spectrum disorder children, particularly in VABS scores. Two children were affected by epileptiform disorder that might have altered the statistically significant improvement in some areas. Moreover, Autism is a lifelong neuro-behavioral disorder very difficult to modify, particularly for the core symptoms of the disorder, as testified by the CARS total scores changes. To date, there is no evidence to support adopting a single autism treatment program as the gold standard. Research is needed to further clarify the common effective elements of treatment programs and patterns of developmental characteristics in children with autism. Finally, the authors want to highlight the importance to use a personalized approach, involving also the parents, tailored to deficits and strengths of each autism spectrum disorder individual to determine the best possible improvement in the adaptive functioning.
