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 .
Measurement error, time lag, unmeasured confounding: Considerations for longitudinal estimation of the effect of a mediator in randomised clinical trials
Clinical trials are expensive and time-consuming and so should also be used to study how treatments work , allowing for the evaluation of theoretical treatment models and refinement and improvement of treatments . These treatment processes can be studied using mediation analysis . R and omised treatment makes some of the assumptions of mediation models plausible , but the mediator– outcome relationship could remain subject to bias . In addition , mediation is assumed to be a temporally ordered longitudinal process , but estimation in most mediation studies to date has been cross-sectional and unable to explore this assumption . This study used  longitudinal structural equation modelling of mediator and outcome measurements from the PACE trial of rehabilitative treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome ( IS RCT N 54285094 ) to address these issues . In particular , autoregressive and simplex models were used to study measurement error in the mediator , different time lags in the mediator– outcome relationship , unmeasured confounding of the mediator and outcome , and the assumption of a constant mediator– outcome relationship over time . Results showed that allowing for measurement error and unmeasured confounding were important . Contemporaneous rather than lagged mediator– outcome effects were more consistent with the data , possibly due to the wide spacing of measurements . Assuming a constant mediator– outcome relationship over time increased precision
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 .