Goals of Autism- Early Behavioral Intervention

Written by:

Each person has a unique brain with unique characteristics and ways of learning, including those with autism. Everyone is unique and different in their own ways. Many individuals with autism are faced with many challenges that stem from biases of society’s expectations and autistic characteristics.

There is always ways to improve and wanting to decrease the stigma, increasing accessibility, and ensuring that autistic individuals are being heard when it comes to voicing their opinions in decisions of autism research, policy, and practice.

Should the goal of intervention be to prevent or promote the loss of an autism diagnosis? Early intervention has been found in several studies to improve life functioning outcomes, such as language, adaptive behaviors, daily living skills, and functional communication skills and should not take away an autism diagnosis later in life if that individual has improved so much and has “moved down” the autism spectrum.

Early intervention also focuses on the goals of different behaviors such as reducing anxiety, aggressive behaviors, meltdowns, and self-injury by replacing with functional communication and coping strategies.

Another goal of early intervention for individuals with autism is to facilitate social interactions and relationships during naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions.

Dawson, G., Franz, L. and Brandsen, S. (2022) At a crossroads-reconsidering the goals of autism early behavioral intervention from a neurodiversity perspective, JAMA pediatrics. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10069446/ (Accessed: 07 July 2024).

Leave a comment