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Friday, May 8, 2009
Northwest Hall (Chicago Hilton)
1:30 PM
Background: Processing information from faces is thought to be central to many of the social and communicative skills that are impaired in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Improving face recognition skills may thus be an important target for early intervention. However, little is known about the effects of intervention on face recognition in young children with ASD.
Objectives: To examine the effect of an intensive randomized intervention, which included a face training component, on the performance of toddlers with ASD during a face recognition test.
Methods: Three groups of children were included: toddlers with general developmental delays (DD group), toddlers with an ASD who participated in community intervention programs (ASD-C group), and toddlers with an ASD who participated in the University of Washington Denver STAART model of intervention (ASD-UW group). UW intervention (Smith, Rogers & Dawson, 2008) was a two year early intensive behavioral therapy that also included training on face recognition using an individualized photo book containing pictures of the child’s parents, family members, and therapists amongst a number of distracters.
The face recognition test was administered when children were 24- to 60-months. Children were asked to ‘point to mom’ from a set of six pictures. Children were tested with both full faces and inner features only.
Results: Preliminary results indicate that the mean difference in scores on the face recognition test between the DD, ASD-C and ASD-UW groups did not significantly differ. However, 26 of 48 children tested to date scored 100% on the task. Notably, thirteen subjects from the ASD-UW group (68%) were able to successfully complete the entire task compared with only four toddlers in the ASD-C group (31%).
Conclusions: Children in the DD, ASD-C and ASD-UW groups performed similarly on the face recognition task, although a ceiling effect may have masked any underlying trends. However, the children in the ASD-UW group were more likely to complete the test than those in the ASD-C group, suggesting that intensive intervention including training on facial picture identification might facilitate compliance during a testing situation. Further analysis will include an analysis of the errors children made during picture selection, which may provide insight into the face recognition strategies used by children who did not score full marks on the test.
Objectives: To examine the effect of an intensive randomized intervention, which included a face training component, on the performance of toddlers with ASD during a face recognition test.
Methods: Three groups of children were included: toddlers with general developmental delays (DD group), toddlers with an ASD who participated in community intervention programs (ASD-C group), and toddlers with an ASD who participated in the University of Washington Denver STAART model of intervention (ASD-UW group). UW intervention (Smith, Rogers & Dawson, 2008) was a two year early intensive behavioral therapy that also included training on face recognition using an individualized photo book containing pictures of the child’s parents, family members, and therapists amongst a number of distracters.
The face recognition test was administered when children were 24- to 60-months. Children were asked to ‘point to mom’ from a set of six pictures. Children were tested with both full faces and inner features only.
Results: Preliminary results indicate that the mean difference in scores on the face recognition test between the DD, ASD-C and ASD-UW groups did not significantly differ. However, 26 of 48 children tested to date scored 100% on the task. Notably, thirteen subjects from the ASD-UW group (68%) were able to successfully complete the entire task compared with only four toddlers in the ASD-C group (31%).
Conclusions: Children in the DD, ASD-C and ASD-UW groups performed similarly on the face recognition task, although a ceiling effect may have masked any underlying trends. However, the children in the ASD-UW group were more likely to complete the test than those in the ASD-C group, suggesting that intensive intervention including training on facial picture identification might facilitate compliance during a testing situation. Further analysis will include an analysis of the errors children made during picture selection, which may provide insight into the face recognition strategies used by children who did not score full marks on the test.