Therapy and corresponding approach(es)

Description

Ref.

Therapy

Approach(es)

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)

Discrete Trial Training (DTT)

A teaching technique performed in a controlled environment, whereby skills desired to be learned by patients are broken into smaller behavioral steps. Repetition and reward are used to enhance learning of desired behaviors while ignoring those undesired or inappropriate in social situations.

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Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT)

A naturalistic teaching technique that takes place in everyday life contexts such as school and home. Using rewards, it aims to help patients learn some particular core behaviors, called pivotal skills, from which many secondary skills can easily be acquired.

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Incidental Teaching (IT)

A naturalistic teaching technique that takes place in everyday life contexts such as school and home. Unlike PRT, it uses patients' natural interests to promote the learning of desired skills. Leading their progress, patients are rewarded for appropriate behaviors they exhibit, reinforcing these behaviors to occur more often.

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Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI)

A teaching technique with structured (methodical) instructions provided to patients at home or in a clinical setting. Relying on DTT, it anticipates desired behaviors by giving clear instructions (cues) that patients would respond to, replacing undesired attitudes (also called challenging behaviors) with new, positive skills.

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Positive Behavior Support (PBS)

A teaching technique qualified as person-centered or family-centered, whereby patients are urged to realize that all behavior serves a purpose to reach a particular want. In a comprehensive and rewarding manner, PBS helps patients set goals for themselves and come along, learning how to behave in particular, appropriate ways apart from challenging behaviors.

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Comprehensive Treatment Models (CTM)

UCLA Young Autism Model

Also called the Lovaas Program, this approach relies on ABA therapy principles to teach positive skills by reinforcing smaller, more attainable behaviors. It is carried out on autistic preschoolers, who are systematically brought to feel social support every time they fulfill a new, appropriate skill. Through weekly planned sessions, undesired behaviors that impede learning are minimized.

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Early Start Denver Model (ESDM)

Designed for toddlers and preschool children, this play-based approach uses ABA to build interest in social communication through enjoying activities. The play environment creates motivation to keep communicating and self-expressing. Social skills are gradually acquired within this play context, whose activities are structured by therapists for intensive skill development.

[50]

Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication-handicapped Children (TEACCH)

A lifelong approach that covers the social development and personal independence of patients. It builds on innate strengths and skills to promote learning and communication through a structured, individualized schedule. This teaching approach puts major emphasis on organization and predictability of daily activities. A gradual transition from specialized centers to the family home is usually accomplished, where parents become the main contributors to therapy.

[51]

Social Communication, Emotional Regulation, and Transactional Support (SCERTS)

This is a cooperative approach whereby parents, teachers, and therapists work together to help autistic children (preschool and primary school levels) learn how to control emotions while communicating with others. Relying on multiple techniques, the SCERTS program is not standardized but rather an individualized timeline of activities that best meets the needs of each child. It is, therefore, considered a supportive service in favor of families with autistic children.

[52]

Focused Interventions (FI)

Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)

Autistic patients submitted to the PECS approach use cards with pictures, photographs, or symbols to express and obtain their wants. Acting as augmentative and alternative communication, PECS is implemented for patients with developmental delays including autistic ones, who may have difficulties with spoken language. Without verbal prompts, patients are taught to exchange on-card-drawn items for actual, desired objects (or actions). This way, communication skills are enhanced and progressively turned into simple, yet worthy, verbal requests.

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Developmental therapy

Developmental, Individual-difference, Relationship-based model (DIR)

A large-scale approach, known as the Floortime Model, targets communicative, emotional, cognitive, and sensorimotor disabilities in all children diagnosed with developmental disorders, including ASD. Relying on both home and school contexts, DIR offers various activities of social interaction, such as daily playtime (usually on the floor) and problem-solving exercises, so that patients build new, adaptive skills to overcome challenges and reach personal milestones.

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Relationship Development Intervention (RDI)

This parent-led, individualized approach aims to help autistic patients use surrounding cues to think flexibly, understand social situations, and engage with people around them in an effective, appropriate manner. Attainment of these goals is expected to improve patient's quality of life, allowing them to handle the challenges of everyday life based on the sharing of ideas and feelings.

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Occupational therapy

Sensory Integration Therapy (SIT)

Usually implemented as individualized program(s), SIT deals with the fact that autistic patients are mostly unable to combine information issued by the sense organs. As sensory integration disability prevents appropriate brain input of environmental and social cues, physical activities that involve more than one sense at a time are planned to teach the autistic brain to learn to process, summate, and regulate a mixture of sensory inputs, resulting in better emotional and social responses in front of real-world stimuli.

[56]

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Functional Analysis of Behavior (FAB)

Commonly defined as one of the essential CBT steps rather than a stand-alone approach to it, FAB searches for reasons (called functions) behind maladaptive behaviors. Once undesired outcomes of such behaviors are first outlined and made clearer to patients, a series of observational analyses is performed backward along the behavioral chain to identify the root cause(s). The target behavior is, therefore, broken down into concatenated parts in search of those that must be changed. The ultimate goal is to alter the problematic thinking to achieve a new coping behavior with desired outcomes.

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Speech and Language Therapy (SLT)

Speech and Language Therapy (SLT)

A specialized approach that improves verbal and non-verbal communication, with a particular focus on reciprocal social interaction. It is usually a group work therapy centered on speech deficits and related features such as semantic misunderstanding. Body language encoded in facial expressions and gestures is addressed meanwhile so that individualized SLT plans are prepared and tailored to the specific needs of each patient. As one of SLT goals, conversational skills are built upon the active contribution of parents and/or caregivers to therapy sessions.

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