The Effect of Early Family-Centered Psychological and Educational Interventions on the Cognition and Social Skills Development of Children with Autism Disorder

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of family-based psychological and educational early interventions on the development of cognition and social skills of children with autism disorder. The method of the study was experimental. For this purpose, using random sampling method, thirty-six children with autism disorder under five years old were selected and assigned to experimental and control groups. In order to collect data, first, Newsha Development Evaluation Test (2008) was implemented on the subjects. Consequently, the intervention program was conducted in15 sessions of 90 minutes on during six months, and data was analyzed using covariance analysis. With regard to the results of analysis of covariance in connection with the interactive impact of gender with a group, it should be said that there is no interactive impact in the effectiveness of family-based psychological and educational early interventions on the development of cognition and social skills of children with autism disorder Also, the findings indicated that there was significant difference between control and experimental groups in cognition(P