As the number of children being diagnosed with autism has increased dramatically over the past decade so has the quantity of new autism treatment methods. However, two models for treating and educating preschoolers with autism have been in use for decades: the Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication-handicapped CHildren (TEACCH) program and the Learning Experiences: Alternative Programs for Preschoolers and Parents (LEAP) program. With the former dating to the mid sixties and the later established in the early eighties, the treatment models were around when autism was still considered a rare developmental disorder.

In brief, TEACCH adapts the classroom environment to support the educational and learning styles favored by children with autism, such as their preference for visual processing of information; children with autism often are in classrooms with other children with autism; and a special education teacher acts as the primary instructor. On the other hand, the LEAP model structures the classroom to be similar to those of typically developing children; children with autism interact with typically developing children; and a special education teacher works with traditional teachers.

To compare the relative efficacy of the two programs in improving social and language skills, my colleague Sam Odom, Ph.D., and I have been collaborating with researchers in Colorado, Florida, and Minnesota on a four-year, federally funded study, “The Comparison of Two Comprehensive Treatment Models for Preschool-Aged Children with Autism and Their Families.” The study, now in its third year, will involve approximately 75 preschool classrooms in the abovementioned states and is unique in a number of ways. In autism studies, it is the first to study the comparative efficacy of existing comprehensive treatment models; moreover, it is one of the largest studies ever conducted on behavioral interventions in general.

The study is also unique because we have been using LENA Pro to measure how children's language production changes over time in classroom settings. For one day in the spring and one day in the fall, each study participant dons the LENA Clothing and LENA DLP. Although we have incorporated other traditional psychometric assessments into the study, we felt that it was important to utilize LENA to capture real-time data from the naturalistic classroom environment, where children are interacting with one another as well as teachers and parents, which can generate a lot of background noise. In this challenging recording environment, not only does LENA compile estimates of the number of child vocalizations, adult words, and adult-child conversational interactions, it also helps us assess the amount of speech overlap and extraneous electronic sounds—factors that could be affecting learning potential.

LENA has proven helpful in many ways. However, one of the characteristics of the technology that was a little unexpected but that has really impressed us is its ease of use. All we have to do is have a study participant wear the DLP during the school day and then hook the DLP up to a PC to generate an amazing amount of data, which can be quickly exported to a Microsoft Excel file. It has proven to be an amazingly fast and easy means of obtaining totally objective information from children's natural environments.

The longitudinal study won't be finished until next year. But once it is and we have more time to assess the information we've gathered, we anticipate that the LENA data will provide some interesting answers on how the language outcomes of the study participants differ in the TEACCH and LEAP programs.

In the meantime, we have used LENA in a small sample study to collect some preliminary data from children with autism. The data, gathered from preschools in one county in North Carolina, show low rates of child vocalizations and conversational turns for children with autism and point to a correlation between baseline cognitive abilities and a child's exposure to adult words. I and other researchers will expand on these findings this month at the Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities in Annapolis, Maryland. Our presentation is scheduled for Thursday, March 18. We hope to see you there.