Teach Effectively!

I stumbled across a Web page billed as “a plethora of information about autism interventions all in one place!” The site is maintained by a person who identifies herself as “Liz.” Liz refers to lots of therapies. Here’s partial list from the page:

• Behavior
• Communication
• Social Stories
• Auditory Training
• Music Therapy
• Vision Therapy
• Medication and Autism
• Cranio Sacral Therapy
• Facilitated Communication
• ‘Son-Rise’-The Options Institute
• Physical Therapy
• Pivotal Response Training
• Play Therapy

As far as I know, apart from the first one (discrete-trial training) or two (augmentative communication), the research on these therapies is quite weak. Of course, I don’t keep up with all the research, so I could have missed something indicating that cranio-sacral therapy (a variation on chiropracty), for example, is actually helpful. Also, I didn’t read through all the pages.

I should note that the author also has a link to a page providing guidance about evaluating therapies; it provides ideas that are defensible for the most part. On another page she provides a list of questions to ask, one of which refers to scientific evidence. Sadly, though, these pages do not debunk any of the therapies in the list. Simply put, there is no critical analysis.

Liz enters appropriate disclaimers (”BBB Autism does NOT endorse any particular therapy or intervention. We DO, however, endorse your right to learn about them!”), but listing these therapies without evaluation consitutes an endorsement of sorts. Each time facilitated communication, for example, appears in a list such as this, it gets some cachet. When they are mentioned repeatedly, parents (and, unfortunately, some teachers) get the idea that there must be something to these therapies.

We need some system for helping consumers to discriminate between those therapies that have some minimal level of empirical support and those that have, at best, testimonials. How can we create that resource and, equally importantly, how can we disseminate it to parents and teachers?

Link for the discussion of therapies, link for questions to ask, and link for the overall Web site.