With the amount of people being diagnosed with autism continuously on the rise, experts are always on the search for new treatments or interventions that may be beneficial for people with autism spectrum disorder. One treatment that derives from a more naturalistic approach, is the Early Start Denver Model, created by Sally J. Rogers. According to Rogers et al. (2012) the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) is an intervention for toddler aged children with autism that incorporates behavioral, developmental and relationship-based strategies within a naturalistic teaching framework. ESDM is used in the child’s home with parents as the primary therapists, to ensure a more natural environment. The …show more content…
The parents receive rigorous training from the primary therapist, and once they are proficient, they are able use their training in the child’s everyday life. The child’s progress as well as the parent’s techniques and skill sets are monitored by the primary therapist through follow up visits and recordings. According to Yoder and Lieberman (2010) ESDM rely heavily on interpersonal exchange and positive affect, shared engagement, adult responsiveness to cues, and communication. One of the benefits of The Early Start Denver Model is that parents usually establish stronger working habits with the therapist, than parents that do not use naturalist child cantered approaches. Another benefit is that is helps improve cognitive delay, like language and adaptive behavior. Research by Ryberg (2015) supports that the Early Start Denver Model can help produce an increase in IQ, improve day to day living and motor skills, and reduce the severity of the symptoms that children with autism …show more content…
According to Ryberg (2015) the Early Start Denver Model can be extremely affective and helps to improve cognition, behavior, and language. Also Ryberg (2015) supports that EDSM increases development not only with symptoms of autism, but development overall. Ryberg (2015) the goes on to say that one of the great aspects of this form of treatment is that it is more cost affordable then many high intensity treatments (because of less time spent with a therapist), which allows more parents to get their children the necessary interventions at a young age. The evidence for this the ESDM is relatively strong because of the large number of people who continued with the study. Also the children had no interventions or treatments outside of those proscribed with in the ESDM, and the study was completely randomized with participants with diverse backgrounds (Yoder & Lieberman,