Pivotal response intervention II: Preliminary long-term outcome data

The literature and our observations suggest that self-initiations may be an especially important part of intervention for children with autism. Theref ore the purpose of this study was to conduct preliminary assessments as to whether self-initiations might be associated with highly favorable postinte rvention outcomes. In the first phase of this study, archival data were ana lyzed for 6 children. At intake, according to traditional variables, they a ppeared to have especially good prognoses for reducing symptoms of autism, but had extremely different outcomes (either exceptionally good or exceptio nally poor) after years of intensive intervention. Results of Phase I indic ated that the children who had highly favorable outcomes exhibited more spo ntaneous self-initiations at preintervention. Given these results; Phase 2 of the study assessed whether a series of self-initiations could be taught to children with autism who demonstrated few or no spontaneous self-initiat ions at preintervention, and whether this intervention would result in high ly favorable postintervention outcomes. Results indicated that these childr en learned a variety of self-initiations and had extremely favorable outcom es. The results of this exploratory study are encouraging in terms of asses sment of key pivotal target behaviors that may be identified as prognostic indicators, and that may be important during intervention for children with autism.