Abstract：
The COVID-19 pandemic not only led to drastic changes in the implementation context for early intervention and early childhood special education services in 2020, but has had an enduring effect on the organizations, educators, families, and children with developmental delays and disorders. Through secondary data analysis, characteristics of toddlers with autism being served in a publicly funded center-based early intervention program as well as the characteristics of their educators are examined, comparing those who were enrolled in (a) two randomized trials conducted prior to the pandemic and (b) one ongoing randomized trial that launched in return to in-person educational services after the pandemic shutdown. Significant demographic differences are found for toddlers, where the current study includes more girls (p = 0.002), who are younger (p < .001) than the prior studies. Further, toddlers enrolled in the current trial are entering with significantly younger receptive (p < .001) and expressive language age-equivalent scores (p < .001) than toddlers from the prior studies. In addition, significant differences are also found for teaching assistants (TAs), who are younger (p < .001), less experienced supporting children with autism (p < .001), have spent less time in this position (p < .001), and who are still working toward college degrees (p < .001) than TAs in the prior studies. Implications of these changes for both intervention strategies to support the strengths and needs of the toddlers (e.g., reduce frequency of TA-child pairing changes to build rapport, increase time in adult-child JASPER before adding peers) as well as implementation strategies (e.g., increase foundational content, TA teaming) to support the training and retention of the TAs are discussed. Clinical Trials Registry number: NCT04283045.
摘要：
COVID-19大流行不仅导致2020年早期干预和早期儿童特殊教育服务的实施背景发生了巨大变化，而且对这些组织产生了持久的影响，教育工作者,家庭,和有发育迟缓和障碍的儿童。通过二次数据分析,研究了在公共资助的基于中心的早期干预计划中服务的自闭症幼儿的特征以及其教育者的特征，比较纳入(a)在大流行前进行的两项随机试验和(b)一项正在进行的随机试验的人,该试验是在大流行停止后返回现场教育服务的.幼儿的人口统计学差异很大，目前的研究包括更多的女孩(p=0.002)，比以前的研究更年轻(p<.001)。Further,与先前研究的幼儿相比，参加本试验的幼儿的接受性（p<.001）和表达性语言年龄等效分数（p<.001）显着年轻。此外,助教(TA)也存在显著差异，谁更年轻（p<.001），经验较少的自闭症儿童（p<.001），在这个职位上花费的时间较少(p<.001)，在之前的研究中，他们仍在攻读大学学位(p<.001)。这些变化对两种干预策略的影响，以支持幼儿的优势和需求(例如，减少TA-child配对更改的频率，以建立融洽的关系，在添加同龄人之前增加成年儿童JASPER的时间)以及实施策略(例如，增加基础内容，讨论了TA团队）以支持TA的培训和保留。临床试验登记号：NCT04283045。
