Abstract
There is a need for evidence based interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to limit the life-long, psychosocial impact of pragmatic language impairments. This systematic review identified 22 studies reporting on 20 pragmatic language interventions for children with ASD aged 0–18 years. The characteristics of each study, components of the interventions, and the methodological quality of each study were reviewed. Meta-analysis was conducted to assess the effectiveness of 15 interventions. Results revealed some promising approaches, indicating that active inclusion of the child and parent in the intervention was a significant mediator of intervention effect. Participant age, therapy setting or modality were not significant mediators between the interventions and measures of pragmatic language. The long-term effects of these interventions and the generalisation of learning to new contexts is largely unknown. Implications for clinical practice and directions for future research are discussed.
Highlights
A core characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a deficiency in social communication and interaction
The speechBITE website, a database of intervention studies in the field of speech pathology created and maintained by an advisory committee based in the Discipline of Speech Pathology at The University of Sydney, was searched for interventions pertaining to pragmatics/social communication for children in the ASD population
The consequences of the social communication impairments in children with ASD are far reaching and life-long, and tailored pragmatic language interventions have the potential to reduce these impacts for children with ASD
Summary
A core characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a deficiency in social communication and interaction. Contemporary definitions have expanded beyond just communicative functions to include behaviour that includes social, emotional, and communicative aspects of language [3]. This expansion reflects an understanding that pragmatic language, social skills and emotional understanding are interconnected, and this definition of pragmatic language will be used for this review. While this definition encompasses pragmatics en masse, one of the challenges for a systematic review on pragmatic language interventions for children with ASD is identifying the skills of pragmatics that are targeted. All parent report surveys measured capacity for reciprocal social communication
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