Moderators and mediators of outcome for early intervention in autism

There is strong evidence that early intervention for autism improves social communication. This includes parent-mediated early intervention which trains parents to us naturalistic developmental behavioural strategies to support their child's social communication development. While the evidence suggests these approaches work, it remains unclear who they work for and how they work; that is what the moderators and mediators of outcome might be. Better understanding of the potential moderators and mediators of early intervention will help clinicians individualise intervention more effectively and focus more on intervention approaches that have the largest impact on outcome.

Our work on early intervention takes place in the context of and the autism early intervention clinic in the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences which is part of the Centre for Autism at the University of Reading (https://www.reading.ac.uk/autism/). The Centre supports research spanning across multiple domains that include fundamental neuroscience underlying the variation in autism-relevant symptoms across the general population, to applied research on clinical interventions and educational approaches targeted to individuals on the autistic spectrum.