The findings did not support the widely reported generalisation ' difficulties ' associated with autism .
Research ers have generally considered autistic individuals to have difficulties generalising learned skills across novel context s. Successful generalisation is necessary for an intervention to have benefits in everyday life beyond the original learning environment .
We conducted a systematic review of r and omised controlled trials of early social communication interventions for children with autism in order to explore generalisation and its measurement .
Randomized Controlled Caregiver Mediated Joint Engagement Intervention for Toddlers with Autism
This study aim ed to determine if a joint attention intervention would result in greater joint engagement between caregivers and toddlers with autism . The intervention consisted of  24 caregiver-mediated sessions  with follow-up 1 year later . Compared to caregivers and toddlers r and omized to the waitlist control group the immediate treatment ( IT ) group made significant improvements in targeted areas of joint engagement . The IT group demonstrated significant improvements with medium to large effect sizes in their responsiveness to joint attention and their diversity of functional play acts after the intervention with maintenance of these skills 1 year post-intervention . These are among the first r and omized controlled data to suggest that short-term parent-mediated  interventions can have important effects on core impairments in toddlers with autism . Clinical Trials # : NCT00065910
The findings did not support the widely reported generalisation ' difficulties ' associated with autism .
Research ers have generally considered autistic individuals to have difficulties generalising learned skills across novel context s. Successful generalisation is necessary for an intervention to have benefits in everyday life beyond the original learning environment .
We conducted a systematic review of r and omised controlled trials of early social communication interventions for children with autism in order to explore generalisation and its measurement .