Effectiveness of Telehealth Social Communication Intervention on Language Skills Among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: a Systematic Review and Meta‑analysis

Ying Hao ；Yao Du； Saijun Zhang；Lin Sun； Gina Keene； Toshikazu Ikuta

This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the effectiveness of telehealth social communication intervention on language skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty-one studies were included, among which 17 were single subject experimental design (SSED). Language outcomes were categorized into five linguistic domains (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics), and meta-analysis was planned for each domain. Meta-analysis was only performed for pragmatic outcomes, due to the small number of studies that included outcomes in other domains. The results showed significant pre- to post-intervention improvement, thus supporting the use of telehealth social communication intervention to improve pragmatic skills among children with ASD. More diverse measures should be used to target linguistic domains beyond pragmatics. The predominant use of SSED warrants large-scale studies for robust evidence in the future.

本系统综述和荟萃分析评估了远程医疗社会沟通干预对自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童语言能力的影响。共纳入 21 项研究，其中 17 项为单人实验设计（SSED）。语言成果分为五个语言领域（语音学、形态学、句法学、语义学和语用学），并计划对每个领域进行元分析。由于包含其他领域结果的研究数量较少，因此只对语用结果进行了元分析。研究结果表明，干预前和干预后的效果都有明显改善，因此支持使用远程医疗社会沟通干预来提高 ASD 儿童的实用技能。除了语用能力之外，还应该使用更多样化的测量方法来测量语言领域。由于主要使用的是社会交往能力评估（SSED），因此今后需要进行大规模研究，以获得可靠的证据。