Early Intervention

Early intervention programs provide a specific, structured approach to education for children with autism from an early age. Compared with children who begin intervention at a later age, children who begin before the age of 4 years have shown significant improvement in their ability to learn new skills and adapt to their environment.

Research indicates that intervention should commence as soon as possible after diagnosis (Clunies-Ross, 1988). In addition, early intervention prevents declines in intellectual development (Guralnick, 1998) and also leads to improvements in most areas of deficit in autism (Smith, 1999; Birnbauer and Leach, 1993; Jocelyn, Casiro, et al., 1998).