Association for Behavior Analysis International

Recent research suggests autism symptoms can emerge as early as 6 months of age and are reliably detected as early as 12 months of age. Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention is the most established intervention for preschool aged children with autism, however best practices for intervention to treat autism symptoms in infancy are still being established. The present study uses a behavior skills training package to teach parents how to implement parent-mediated behavioral intervention strategies with their infants who are showing signs of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Ten parent/infant dyads participated in the 12-week intervention, which consisted of1-hour weekly parent-coaching sessions, focusing on using daily routines such as mealtimes and play, to teach imitation, joint-attention and verbal behavior to their infants who ranged in age from 7-18 months. Five-minute videos were recorded at the start of every session and scored using partial interval recording for the presence of target behaviors. Three parent and three infant target behaviors were targeting throughout the twelve sessions. Results will be discussed in terms of acquisition of target behaviors, reductions in autism symptoms using a low-intensity parent-mediated behavioral treatment model and the social validity of the intervention.

Research into factors underlying the dissemination of evidence based practice is limited within the field of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA). One of the most comprehensive models of evidence based practice, the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARIHS) framework (Rycroft-Malone et al, 2004), suggests that the perceptions of decision makers are often the most significant facilitators of, and barriers to, research utilisation. Within autism education in the UK there is evidence to suggest that parents are key decision makers. This study is the first to try to quantify UK parental perceptions of behaviourally based approaches to the education and support of children with autism. Using an internet based survey, it is also the first to explore the perceptions of parents whose children have not had experience of behaviourally based approaches. We found that current and or past use of ABA, and parental education were significant predictors of parental perceptions of ABA even after controlling for key demographic variables, with experience of ABA and higher parental education resulting in scores that reflected a more favourable disposition towards ABA. The findings support the idea that parental perception of ABA may influence dissemination. Further investigation is clearly necessary.