Pediatric food selectivity interventions in children on the autism spectrum

2015

The goals of this research are to (a) compare the efficacy of applied behavior analytic treatment (ABA) to a wait-list control group of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and food selectivity in terms of independent acceptance and gram consumption of new target foods and nutritional content of the diet; (b) establish pilot data on the efficacy of ABA in a well-defined cohort of children with ASD and feeding problems to use to develop a randomized clinical trial; and (c) effectively disseminate the findings. Dependent measures include independent acceptance of target foods, (b) grams consumed of target foods, and (c) nutritional content of the diet. We will select 6 children diagnosed with ASD who consume a limited variety of foods. We will randomly assign 3 children each to wait-list control and ABA treatment groups. This proposal is innovative because it will be the first to (a) provide initial validation of ABA as treatment for food selectivity in a well-defined and randomly assigned group of children with ASD; (b) develop technologically precise and manualized treatment protocols for the treatment of food selectivity in children with ASD, which we will use in a subsequent randomized clinical trial; and (c) implement national and international dissemination strategies that have the potential to fundamentally change treatment of feeding disorders in children with ASD worldwide.

Feeding Disorders; autism; ASD; ABA

Performing Research or Evaluation

Health-Related Activities

Children/Adolescents with Disabilities/SHCN

Racial or Ethnic Minorities, Geographic Areas, Rural/Remote, Urban, Specific Groups

Single-County

N/A