Eficácia da Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention para crianças com transtornos do espectro autista: uma revisão sistemática

• Autor(a) principal: Pires, Ivens Hira
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações do Mackenzie
• Texto Completo: http://dspace.mackenzie.br/handle/10899/22475
• topic: transtorno autístico; estudos de intervenção; terapia comportamental; avaliação de eficácia-efetividade de intervenções; revisão; autistic disorder; intervention studies; behavior therapy; evaluation of the efficacy-effectiveness of interventions; review; CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::PSICOLOGIA

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are developmental disorders which show symptoms early on, being characterized by impairments in reciprocal social interaction skills and communication, the presence of stereotyped behaviors, restricted interests and it may or may not be accompanied by mental retardation. Scientific literature indicates the importance of an ASD early diagnosis in order to offer interventions for a better prognosis. One of the key interventions with valuable evidence for children with ASD is the Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI). This intervention is based on concepts of Applied Behavior Analysis, tailored specifically for children with ASD. This study aims to identify and critically describe the scientific literature on the effectiveness of EIBI for children with ASD. A systematic search performed during the 2005-2010 period, in the main databases (PubMed, Cochrane, SciELO and LILACS) and ASD on EIBI, where we identified three meta-analyses with EIBI. All selected studies in the meta-analyses (except for two) were identified to carry out a detailed reading of each one targeting a critical analysis of the strength of the EIBI's effectiveness in children with ASD. The meta-analysis included the evaluation of 1,008 children, but the sample average for each study was small (39 children). After analyzing 27 of the 29 articles, it was found that the most analyzed areas in the studies were: change in IQ variation in aspects of language and adaptive behavior, other than those related to the severity of the ASD symptoms. As a stronger result, the studies showed evidence of EIBI effectiveness due to a statistically significant increase in IQ at the end of the intervention. In addition, improvements were reported in language (7 / 16 studies)and in adaptive behavior (12/18 studies). However, some methodological limitations were identified because of the small sample size, lack of control groups and follow up cases after the end of the interventions. Although the results indicate the effectiveness tendency of EIBI for children with ASD, the study's methodology is not sufficiently thorough to make more definitive statements. Due to lack of effective evidence of other interventions for ASD and EIBI is still one of the most suitable. Based on the results, this study's main recommendations of are: (1) to conduct further studies with greater methodological thoroughness to prove the effectiveness of EIBI for children with ASD and (2) development of Brazilian studies on early intervention for ASD particularly aimed at public health system. Thus, there is evidence of EIBI effectiveness for children with ASD, but new studies are still needed to prove these results.