In addition to difficulties in social interaction and communication, children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) also exhibit behaviors that interfere with daily activities and are difficult to control, which can lead to disturbances in the household and extended family. The child's limited social, emotional and communicative abilities, their unequal cognitive development and maladaptive behaviors are a source of stress for parents. The goal of our study was to assess the level of stress in parents of children with ASD in relation to gender, education, age of parents, the child's age, and speech and language skills. The sample of this study consisted of 40 parents (20 mothers and 20 fathers) 21 to 56 years of age. All respondents were parents of children with ASD; 22 were parents of children receiving treatment at the Institute for Experimental Phonetics and Speech Pathology "Đorđe Kostić" and 18 parents were members of the Association of parents of children with autism. In this study, we used The Parental Stress Scale (Berry & Jones, 1995) to assess the level of stress among parents. The results show that there are no statistically significant differences in the level of stress in relation to parental sex, parental age, the child's age and child's expressive language development. We found a statistically significant effect of parental education level (p=0.005), child's receptive language development (p=0.008), and child's verbal communication development (p=0.015) on parental stress level.Parental lower education level, child's inability to understand speech, and undeveloped verbal communication of the child can lead to greater parental stress. The stress of parents can significantly complicate and slow down the process of child rehabilitation. It is important to know that it is equally necessary to support fathers and mothers, parents of all ages, parents of children of all ages and different speech and language skills and that particular attention should be given to parents with lower education.

The intervention focused on starting treatment at an early age to develop the child’s full potential, which is known as early intervention. Given that autistic symptoms and language deficits occur at an early age and affect other areas of development in children with autistic spectrum disorder, we wanted to examine if early intervention is more effective in the reduction in autistic symptoms and language deficits in children aged 36–47 months old when compared to children 48–60 months old. The sample consisted of 29 children diagnosed with ASD who were admitted for integrative therapy. All participants were divided into two groups based on age: G1: 36–47 months old children, and G2: 48–60 months old children. To estimate the presence of autistic symptoms, we used the GARS-3, and for the assessment of speech–language abilities, we used the subscale Estimated Speech and Language Development (ESLD). Our results regarding the effect of the group on the difference in the scores at two time points showed that there was a statistically significant effect of the group on the reduction in autistic symptoms (p < 0.05) but no effect of the group on the differences in speech–language abilities between the two time points (p > 0.05). Our study highlights the importance of emphasizing the exact age when using the terms “early intervention” and “early development” in future studies and practice because it is necessary to determine and establish guidelines about which particular ages are crucial for starting treatment in certain developmental aspects.

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Auditory processing in children diagnosed with speech and language impairment (SLI) is atypical and characterized by reduced brain activation compared to typically developing (TD) children. In typical speech and language development processes, frontal, temporal, and posterior regions are engaged during single-word listening, while for non-word listening, it is highly unlikely that perceiving or speaking them is not followed by frequent neurones' activation enough to form stable network connections. This study aimed to investigate the electrophysiological cortical activity of alpha rhythm while listening words and non-words in children with SLI compared to TD children. The participants were 50 children with SLI, aged 4 to 6, and 50 age-related TD children. Groups were divided into 2 subgroups: first subgroup -children aged 4.0 to 5.0 years old (E = 25, C = 25) and second subgroup -children aged 5.0 to 6.0 years old (E = 25, C = 25). The younger children's group did not show statistically significant differences in alpha spectral power in word or non-word listening. In contrast, in the older age group for word and non-word listening, differences were present in the prefrontal, temporal, and parieto-occipital regions bilaterally. Children with SLI showed a certain lack of alpha desynchronization in word and non-word listening compared with TD children. Non-word perception arouses more brain regions because of the unknown presence of the word stimuli. The lack of adequate alpha desynchronization is consistent with established difficulties in lexical and phonological processing at the behavioral level in children with SLI.

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