Cognitive Therapy for Children with Intellectual Disabilities: A New Look at Social Adaptation Skills and Interpersonal Relationships.

There was no control group. Every child received the same sessions, so ordinary teaching, four months of growing up, or simply having answered the same questionnaire twice before cannot be separated from the programme. The paper calls itself a randomised study but also states there was no control group and an uncontrolled before-and-after design, so no randomisation to compare groups actually took place. The children were not tested after the programme ended, so the paper cannot say whether the gains lasted. The severity of each child's intellectual disability and the condition that caused it were not recorded, and all the children were treated the same way, so it is unknown who responds to this kind of programme. Results are group averages only, so no individual child's progress can be seen. The outcome is a 100-item questionnaire on personality and social competence. A higher score is not the same as an observed change in how a child communicates with other people.

The supplied article contains no funding statement and no declaration of competing interests, so who paid for the work, and whether the authors had a stake in cognitive therapy, is not reported.

Do not read this as a randomised trial showing cognitive therapy works. The paper calls the study randomised, but it also states there was no control group and that all 350 children received the same sessions, so the improvements could come from ordinary schooling, from getting older, or from practice at the same test three times. Nothing here shows what would have happened without the programme.