Comparative Effectiveness of Autism Language Training Interventions in China

A retrospective study compares PROMPT-based and structured home-based language training for 124 children with autism spectrum disorder and speech delay. The analysis uses propensity score matching to evaluate outcomes in language developmental stages and image expression ability before and after a 3-month intervention.

Use Cases

• Compare Sign-Significant Relation (S-S) developmental stage distributions between PROMPT and control groups to measure intervention efficacy.
• Analyze improvement in image expression ability scores before and after the 3-month intervention across both training cohorts.
• Apply propensity score matching on patient cohorts to control for selection bias when comparing language comprehension outcomes.

Strengths

• Direct comparison of two specific therapeutic interventions (PROMPT-based vs. structured home-based training) for a defined clinical population.
• Study employs a 1:1 propensity score matching method with a caliper of 0.05 on 124 total patients to reduce confounding bias.
• Outcomes are measured using specific metrics: Sign-Significant Relation (S-S) developmental stages and image expression ability.

Limitations

• Dataset is very small (17.7 KB), likely containing summary results rather than raw patient-level data, limiting analytical depth.
• Data is confined to a single hospital in China, limiting geographic and demographic generalizability.
• The DOCX file format suggests the data is presented in a document table, not a machine-readable structured format like CSV.

Provenance

Source

Yongkang Women and Children's Health Hospital.

Collection Method

Retrospective analysis using propensity score matching on patient records.

Time Range

January 2023 to January 2025.

Freshness

Data covers patients treated from January 2023 to January 2025, with the dataset last updated in March 2026.

Geography

China.