Short-term speech-language intervention for children with disorders of the autism spectrum.

PURPOSE To assess any changes in the Functional Communicative Profile (FCP) and in the Social Cognitive Performance (SCP) of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, based on two short periods of intervention. METHODS The study was conducted with 21 children with Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnoses, randomly allocated into two groups, who received the same short-term intervention types (6 weeks with the mother and 6 weeks with the support of an educational software program). The intervention process was conducted by speech-language pathologists who were part of a graduate program in this area. RESULTS Samples of 15-minute interaction sessions between the child and speech-language pathologist were used to assess the changes in the FCP and the SCP. The statistic analysis pointed out differences only in Group 1 for the variables "percentage of communicative space used" and "use of the mediating object". CONCLUSION With the intervention sessions structured over 12 weeks, it was possible to observe a few changes in the children's FCP and in the SCP. Therefore, we point out the need for new research studies of longer duration.