Understanding the National Standards Project: Evidence-Based Interventions To Support the Language and Social Communication of Children With ASD

Abstract

School-based clinicians are seeing a growing population of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) on their caseloads. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) have a responsibility to understand the available interventions, consider the profiles of children most likely to benefit from particular interventions, and recognize those skills or behaviors most likely to be positively affected by evidence-based treatments. The National Standards Project through the National Autism Center (2009; www.nationautismcenter.org) recently identified treatments that have evidence for supporting receptive and expressive language, facilitating the social and cognitive aspects of communication, and incorporating a variety of communication modalities. Those treatments are reported here.