IMFAR Special Interest Group:  Contextually-valid interventions for school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders
Organizers:  Laura Anthony & Lauren Kenworthy, Children’s National Medical Center, GWU
Friday, 5/21, 12-1pm

Though there is a preponderance of evidence behind early intervention and intensive behavioral approaches in treatment for ASD, there are few empirically-supported treatments (EST) designed to serve school-aged children with ASD with the cognitive and verbal skills to benefit from higher-order cognitive and social interventions.  The 2010 IACC Strategic Plan includes a focus on “Interventions that improve functioning and quality of life for people with ASD across the lifespan, including older children, adolescents, and adults with ASD.”  Children with ASD with intact language and cognitive skills are a uniquely under-served group in the treatment research literature, yet recent prevalence reports suggest that this is the fastest growing group of individuals being newly diagnosed.  This Special Interest Group will focus on developing and/or adapting new methodologies to increase the availability of EST for ASD.  In particular, given the difficulties in generalization that are inherent in ASD, we will focus the discussion on how we can develop ESTs that are also contextually-based and ecologically-valid.  We aim to guide discussion around using a participatory research model to develop new intervention techniques that target specific areas of difficulty that prevent individuals on the autism spectrum from meeting their long-term educational, social and/or career goals. 

Proposed Agenda

We would like to keep this meeting centered on solutions to the most common problems inherent in doing this kind of intervention work (i.e., the challenges that are difficult to convey in publications), so that we can all learn from each other.  To that end, we propose a focused open discussion among SIG members addressing the following issues:

1:00-1:25

• Choosing the right context for your intervention

1:25-1:50

• Participatory process of intervention development
• Imbedded interventionists vs. outside interventionists
• Training and ensuring fidelity
• Bottom-up approach
• How do you measure the effects of your intervention on the context?

1:50-2:00

• Email or listserve?
• Position paper?
• Meeting again at IMFAR?

We will have transcriptionists that will be able to distribute notes from the discussion to all participants.