Overcoming hurdles to intervention studies with autistic children with profound communication difficulties and their families.
Ailbhe McKinney, Emma Jl Weisblatt, Kathryn L Hotson, Zahra Bilal Ahmed, Claudia Dias, Dorit BenShalom, Juliet Foster, Suzanne Murphy, Sofía S Villar, Matthew K Belmonte
PMID 33827289WHAT IT FOUND
This paper offers practical advice for researchers running trials with non-verbal or minimally verbal autistic children.
It describes how to manage testing environments, engage families, and handle challenging behaviours. It does not report whether any intervention worked or what the trial results were.
What this paper is
This article provides guidelines for conducting clinical trials with autistic children who have profound communication difficulties. It draws on the authors' experience recruiting and testing 30 participants for a feasibility study but does not report the results of that study, which are published separately. Because it contains no outcome data or efficacy findings, there is nothing here to change clinical practice on.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the successful recruitment of 30 children as evidence that the Point OutWords intervention is effective. The article explicitly states that the main feasibility results are in a separate forthcoming paper, so no clinical outcomes are reported here.