Examining Behavioral Interventions for Infancy and Early Toddlerhood: A Systematic Review of Intervention Parameters, Effects, and Participant Populations

Rapid advancement is paving the way to identify children who would likely benefit from early intervention during the first years of life, prior to the onset of significant delays in development. With the widely acknowledged benefits of early intervention, key questions arise: Does behavioral intervention targeted to infancy and early toddlerhood improve developmental outcomes? What procedures might be used, and under what circumstances? Who do these interventions work for? The current review comprehensively examined the literature on behavioral interventions based in operant learning paradigm, focused on key developmental areas with children in the first two years of life. We located and synthesized 45 studies with unique participant cohorts that included 1,143 children between the ages of 1 to 23 months old. Interestingly, the search revealed the majority of studies focused on infants in the first year of life, of which a large proportion investigated approaches to increase vocalizations or other forms of communication. We provide implications, limitations, and future directions on how behavioral interventions for infants and young toddlers can inform future intervention research with infant populations

SPARK: A US Cohort of 50,000 Families to Accelerate Autism Research

The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) has launched SPARKForAutism. org, a dynamic platform that is engaging thousands of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and connecting them to researchers. By making all data accessible, SPARK seeks to increase our understanding of ASD and accelerate new supports and treatments for ASD