Our Research Program
Background
The Meredith Autism Program (MAP) started as part of research originally funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The primary aim of the research was to replicate research published by Dr. Ivar Lovaas in 1987.
Lovaas’ development of this method to teach young children with autism began in the 1960s and continued with his landmark study published in 1987—“Behavioral treatment and normal education and intellectual functioning in young autistic children,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55, 3-9. Lovaas found that some of the young children with autism involved in his study made tremendous gains, never before documented with a specific intervention. To verify that the gains made by these children were truly because of the method of teaching he developed, Lovaas began the research replication site project in the late 1980s.
The Meredith Autism Program became one of these replication sites for Lovaas’ research in 1998. Each site was required to have a person trained at UCLA and the Lovaas Institute for Early Intervention (LIFE) with Lovaas’ staff. The MAP continues to enroll children in its research program and hopes to publish similar research results in the future.
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Our Services
The MAP provides an average of 35-40 hours of one-on-one intensive behavior modification training sessions per week for each child. Consultants provide training for the family and staff on a weekly basis. Those who teach the child on a weekly basis compose the child’s “team”. The team consists of both undergraduate students and paid staff.
Undergraduate students provide most of the teaching hours. The full-time consultant assigned to each case provides all training and quality control of students. The teaching sessions are conducted both in the home and on the Meredith College campus. MAP staff are responsible for all administrative duties of the intervention, including scheduling, cancellations, training and conducting meetings.
Once a child has learned basic skills necessary for classroom participation and has demonstrated the ability to learn from a group environment and socialize with peers, their consultant will help the family find a small group setting such as a private preschool for the child to attend a specified amount of time each week. These costs are additional to the family though MAP staff assists in finding scholarships. The child will begin attending this setting with a shadow from the program who will assist them in their ability to learn from this environment. The eventual goal is for the shadow to fade out of the setting and the child to participate independently.
All children must enter the program with an independent diagnosis of autism or pervasive developmental disorder (PDD). Children must begin the intervention no later than three years, six months (42 months) of age. Families must live within a 25 mile radius of Meredith College. Prior to acceptance, children are given a battery of tests to determine if the child meets the minimum developmental age requirements for research. Children with a developmental age below the given requirements also typically have a diagnosis of mental retardation in the profound range and will most likely make minimal gains with this intervention. Children are typically involved in the intervention for two to four years. All children receive standardized assessments before intervention begins and every succeeding year until the age of seven.
The goal of the program is to individualize principles of applied behavioral analysis (ABA) and discrete trial teaching to allow any child served to reach his/her maximum potential in all areas of deficit. The initial goal for every child is to fully mainstream into regular education. However, at least half of all children completing the intervention will not independently mainstream. The goals for these children are significant skill gains, an improved classroom placement, and the child’s ability to function independently. Skill gains are measured though annual standardized assessments, developmental checklists, annual goals, and overall quality of life.
When children involved in the research have reached the age of seven, approximately 45% may have reached normal intelligence scores, be in a typical classroom placement, and be indistinguishable from other typical peers—“best outcome”. This was the result of Lovaas’ 1987 study that the Meredith Autism Program is in the process of replicating.
If the MAP staff feels that the intervention is not making a significant difference in a child’s global functioning and quality of life, the family may be asked to transition to another type of service. The MAP intervention includes assistance in transition to a typical classroom or special education classroom placement.
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Parent Involvement
Previous research (Lovaas, 1987) has shown that children whose families receive training and who participate in the intervention make maximum skill gains and maintain those gains. Therefore, parents participating in the program are required to attend weekly team meetings and parent training sessions conducted with the program director as needed. Parents are required to maintain consistency in behavior protocol by following protocol implemented at the MAP.
All skills taught must be generalized in order to become functional. This means that the child must be able to demonstrate the mastered skill across different people, in a variety of places, given a variety of instructions, using a variety of materials (if applicable) and with increased levels of distractibility. Parents are also responsible for helping the child generalize skills across these areas. Skills are not considered mastered until the child demonstrates complete and consistent generalization.
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