A Study on the Efficacy of Project ImPACT on Imitation Skills of Toddlers with Autism

The current study wanted to contribute to the current literature on the importance of early intervention in toddlers with ASD. To do so, the effect of Project ImPACT - a parent-mediated naturalistic developmental behavioural intervention – on imitation skills was investigated. Imitation is a pivotal skill for social communication development, thus it is important to find effective treatments to ameliorate it. To do so, 37 toddler-caregiver dyads were recruited, and a randomized clinical trial with three time-points was run, in which 17 participants were assigned to the treatment as usual (TAU) condition, and 20 to the ImPACT condition. The hypotheses were that by implementing ImPACT an increase in imitation would occur and that this increase would be greater compared to those in the TAU condition, and that there would be a significant negative correlation between ASD severity and imitation scores. The expectations of the first hypothesis were not met, whilst we did find a significant negative correlation between ASD symptomatology and imitation skills, which confirms that it is of foremost importance to find interventions which focus on improving imitation skills.