Autism spectrum disorder: communicative profile before and after remote family guidance.
Leonara Emanuelle Honório Silva, Denise Brandão de Oliveira E Britto
PMID 41124524WHAT IT FOUND
After remote caregiver guidance, children already receiving speech-language therapy showed more communication attempts, ways of communicating and conversational space; children without therapy showed more attempts only.
Guidance was added to therapy, so its separate effect is unclear.
Key findings
01For children who had undergone or were undergoing speech-language therapy, mean communicative acts per minute changed from 5.09 to 7.15, mean communicative functions from 6.92 to 8.73, and mean communicative space from 24.77% to 31.58% after the guidance programme.
02For children who had never undergone speech-language therapy, mean communicative acts per minute changed from 5.04 to 6.86, mean communicative functions stayed at 8.60, and mean number of responses changed from 28.60 to 18.80.
03After guidance, 53.8% of children who had undergone or were undergoing speech-language therapy and 80.0% of children who had never undergone it had age-appropriate communicative acts.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was before-and-after, with no untreated control group, so changes over time cannot be compared with what would have happened without guidance. Most children in the main group also had direct speech-language therapy, so the separate contribution of caregiver guidance cannot be isolated. The group without direct therapy had only five children, and several outcomes in that group were not significant. Attrition was large: 149 parents expressed interest, 98 completed baseline recordings, and 31 children were analysed; 68.3% of participants were not included in the final sample. In the larger group, most caregivers were mothers (90.3%) and had a bachelor's degree (76.9%), so the sample may not represent families with lower education or less time. The authors state that the heterogeneous groups prevent generalisation and make it impossible to compare children who were and were not receiving therapy. The paper does not report whether the video analyses were blinded to before or after status.
Declared interests
Financial support was provided by FAPEMIG - PIBIC/PROBIC (04/2022). No other conflicts of interest are stated.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that remote caregiver guidance alone caused the improvements. The children who showed the most changes were also receiving direct speech-language therapy, and the study had no untreated control group, so the separate effect of guidance cannot be isolated.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →