ABA Resource for Parents

Early Intervention is Critical

 

An early intervention for children on the spectrum is critical. Treatments for Autism, particularly Applied Behavior Analysis can improve the lives of people of all ages. However, the younger an Autistic child is when he/she begins the right ABA, the better the long term outcome is going to be, the more substantial the positive changes will be. There's quite a lot of scientific data supporting this.

 

lt's not that ABA does not achieve positive gains for older children too. lt does, but the rate at which the human brain absorbs information is at its highest peak during the early formative years. Using language as an example; let's say that your native language is English, you're in your twenties, and you relocate to Sweden for example's sake, and you have no formal teaching of how to speak Swedish. Without formal training, and just existing in a Swedish society, you will likely eventually learn to speak fluent Swedish, but this will take you years to achieve. How is it then, that an infant born in Sweden who's a fraction of your age, can do the same but in half the time? The answer is that his brain is firing much more rapidly than yours is, absorbing information much faster, due to his age.

 

Multiple studies have been carried out that contain credible empirical scientific data displaying the effectiveness of ABA when it's implemented early on in an Autistic child's life. The most well known of these studies is probably the 1987 Lovaas UCLA study "Behavioral treatment and normal educational and intellectual functioning in young autistic children. " A second study reproduced the remarkable results of this study by replicating the same ABA model and paramaters used; Sallows, Graupner 2005 "Intensive Behavioral Treatmentfor Children with Autism: Four-Year Outcome and Predictors." Additional information about these studies and other studies is detailed in the Research section of this website.

 

I was unable to locate much data on children who are older than three when they begin their ABA program, with the exception of one significant study carried out through the Douglas Developmental Disabilities Center at Rutgers University, Harris, Handleman 2005 "Age and IQ at Intake as PredIctors of Placementfor Young Children with Autism: A Four- to Six-Year Follow-Up". The purpose of this study was to explore the significance of a child's age and IQ when they began an intensive Applied Behavior Analysis program and whether or not these two numbers (age and IQ) would predict the gains that the child would achieve upon completion of the treatment. The majority of the children that experienced the largest gains in lQ levels, were the children who began the treatment at an earlier age. I think it's also important to note, that even the children who'd started near their 4th birthday still achieved significant gains in IQ levels; meaning age three is not some sort of magical cut off number for beginning ABA treatment; three or earlier is simply the optimal age. What's disheartening is that the children in the study who began after their 5th birthday saw no increase or a minimal increase in their IQ levels. This supports the idea that an early intervention is critical.