Current Trends in Telehealth Applications to Deliver Social Communication Interventions for Young Children with or at Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Purpose of Review Early, intensive, and high-quality interventions can often improve social communication outcomes for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Many children experience barriers to intervention, resulting in significant delays to intervention onset or missed opportunities for intervention altogether. With constant advances in technology, the field is experiencing a rapid increase in investigation of telehealth applications to intervention delivery. This article highlights the current trends in social communication intervention via telehealth used in early intervention practices for children with ASD over the past 5 years, including a brief review of studies (from 2014 to January 2020) and our team's experiences in this area. Recent Findings Based on our experience and the 22 studies we identified in this area, we describe the current trends in telehealth applications used and how interventions were delivered. We also provide recommendations, limitations, and future directions on this topic. Summary Telehealth offers innovative intervention delivery options by increasing intervention access, overcoming barriers such as geography and costs of service delivery for young children with ASD.

Telehealth for Families of Children With Special Needs: Experts’ Opinions

“…Iocano and colleagues (2016) state that volunteering as well as qualification of the practitioner are significant so that TI can be successful. Moreover, video examples for the families (Meadan et al, 2016), continuous feedback for families and family-and child-oriented target skills (Simacek, Elmquist, Dimian, & Reichle, 2020) play crucial roles in designing TI, which is consistent with the findings in our study. Thus, future research may compare the effectiveness and efficacy between two TI procedures in which true and/or false examples are used.…”

From Social Distancing to Social Connections: Insights From the Delivery of a Clinician-Caregiver Co-mediated Telehealth-Based Intervention in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…These factors, coupled with the economic and geographic access-related advantages of virtual interventions, may lead to some families preferring to engage in virtual research exclusively ( 25 , 35 ). Therefore, it would be prudent for researchers to provide families with the flexibility to choose between F2F interventions with adequate precautions and virtual training sessions ( 15 , 17 , 36 ). Although this adds variability to collected data, meticulous documentation of intervention format-related variables (F2F vs. virtual, clinicians alone or clinicians + caregivers) can allow researchers to systematically assess the effects of these variables on treatment effects ( 35 ).…”

“…Our insights are also supported by other research that suggests that the telehealth-model of intervention delivery requires greater active participation from parents to ensure intervention success compared to F2F delivery ( 16 ). Parents in fact report greater beneficial effects of having ongoing, synchronous clinician input and assistance compared to a purely self-directed or asynchronous model of telehealth ( 16 , 17 , 20 ). Below we provide further explanation of why a clinician-caregiver co-mediated approach has salient benefits compared to other modes of intervention delivery.…”

“…This includes synchronous, real-time video conferencing between families and clinicians as well as asynchronous transmission of content (instructional modules, videos/images, and websites) via the internet for caregiver coaching (15). The advantages of telehealth over traditional face-to-face (F2F) service delivery include cost-effectiveness, expanded geographic access, reduction in family and clinician travel costs, freedom to learn content at own pace (for asynchronous content), and reduced chances of infection due to in-person contact during the pandemic (16,17). There is growing evidence for the use of telehealth-based service delivery in children for ABA-based services, OT, and SLT (18)(19)(20)(21)(22).…”

Examination of the Effectiveness and Acceptability of a Play-Based Sibling Intervention for Children with Autism: A Single-Case Research Design

“…Telehealth can be a preferred service delivery mode for increasing accessibility of interventions, overcoming geographic barriers, and reducing traveling times for both families and interventionists (Simacek et al, 2020 ). Synchronous telehealth intervention did allow for immediate instruction, modeling, and instantaneous feedback which proved advantageous when working with siblings.…”