Intervention that addresses the core communication problems in autism at an early age may promote social and communication skills.

Autism is often diagnosed when children are young and there is a high burden of care for the families of the child with autism. This paper describes the first large scale trial of a social communication intervention approach for preschool children. The intervention promotes parent-child communication in areas such as looking at the same thing (joint attention), starting a conversation, and reading non-verbal signals. The authors believe that if these skills can be taught to a child with autism at a young age then language skills will come in as the child ages. The trial has started, but the results are not yet in. Read more...