“This is a truly remarkable response to a very short intervention,” says Jeanette McAfee, founder and director of California’s Social Solutions Clinic and author of Navigating the Social World: A Curriculum for Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome, High Functioning Autism and Related Disorders. “As always, there is a need for larger studies to assure that the results are reproducible.”
“The results…are promising,” Tanaka says, “[but] they deserve independent test and replication.”
Others defend the research findings, noting that Baron-Cohen’s methods and status as an interested party are hardly atypical. “Almost all treatments proposed [for autism] have been studied initially by the creators of those treatments,” says Catherine Lord, director of the University of Michigan Autism and Communication Disorders Center. “And almost always treatments have not worked as well when carried out by others. But it is to his credit that he studied its effectiveness at all. Many treatments offered to families of children with autism spectrum disorder have virtually no data to support them.”
Most experts agree that there’s really no harm that can come from watching the DVD, though they warn that getting the maximum results may depend on whether or not parents reinforce the lessons through one-on-one conversations about the episodes and emotions. “Don’t plop the kid in front of it without any further discussion,” Strauss says.
Researchers also stress that The Transporters isn’t meant to be a miracle cure but rather a useful step in treating one major symptom of a complex disorder. “I would encourage families not to see this, or any other treatment, as a simple solution,” Lord says, “but to take advantage of its creative approach to engaging children to set goals and build strategies…to build real social behaviors with real people.”
For their part, parents say that any potential source of improvement is better than none at all and that even a minor jump in development can be huge for an autistic child. “The thing about autism is that any step that is made in improving a child’s relationship with the world is going to be a small step, but at the same time it’s a massive step,” Freeborn says. “It’s not a quick fix, but The Transporters doesn’t imply that it’s going to be a quick fix. It recognizes how a child with autism learns, which is very differently than anyone else.”
