When ideas for a new study were being proposed, MacART member Dr. Peter Szatmari said that, “I thought it would be a study on what’s the most effective form of early intervention, or what’s the best treatment.” Instead, the most frequently posed question was “what determines how well a person with autism will function in life?”
To address this issue, Szatmari and his team launched the Pathways in Autism Spectrum Disorders study with the goal of describing changes in children’s skills, abilities, and ASD symptoms over time. The study was also designed to find out what factors, like intelligence, language skills, or gender, influence how each child grows and develops.
Excerpted from The measure of a life by Nicholette Zeliad, Spectrum. https://spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/the-measure-of-a-life/