Association for Behavior Analysis International

Parent training has been shown to be beneficial for parents of children with ASD and those at risk for ASD in terms of child skill development and behaviour reduction. However, few studies specifically report parent implementation fidelity, or parents’ ability to generalize and maintain newly developed skills. In this symposium results from three studies that used telehealth or combined face to face and telehealth models to teach parents to support their child’s general skill development, to support the use of augmentative alternative communication systems, and to address sleep challenges will be presented. Talks will focus on strategies to facilitate parent and child skill generalization and maintenance, and practical considerations for telehealth service delivery. Finally, this symposium will explore what we do and do not know in terms of the quality and rigor of single-case experimental design literature related to parent training for child behaviour reduction.

Intermediate audience. Attendees should have an understanding of foundational behavioral terminology and single-case experimental design.

There is extensive research indicating that the Picture Exchange Communication System® (PECS®) is an effective functional communication system for children with autism spectrum disorder (e.g., Wong et al., 2015). However, little is known about how best to train parents to support their child’s PECS use. Similarly, little is known about how to train parents to use PECS via telehealth. The present study involved online mediator training amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of the study was to bridge the gap between PECS and telehealth research, and to explore strategies to help parents support their child’s PECS use at home. One father-mother dyad was recruited for the study. Researchers used behavioral skills training to teach parents and applied strategies of general case training to actively program for generalization. A multiple baseline design across skills was used to measure the primary parent’s treatment fidelity and a multiple probe design was embedded to monitor both parents’ fidelity in the natural environment with their child. Results demonstrated that the primary parent acquired target PECS skills within the training setting. However, not all target PECS skills were reliably demonstrated by parents’ in the generalization setting during follow-up. Implications for practice will be discussed.

Many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate challenging behaviors and interventions based on applied behavior analysis (ABA) have been shown to be effective for reducing these challenging behaviors, often through multicomponent interventions. Previous research has shown that parents can be trained to effectively implement multicomponent ABA interventions with their children to address challenging behavior, but systematic reviews examining research in this area are lacking. The present study included a complete review of single case design studies of parent training in multicomponent ABA interventions to reduce challenging behavior in children with ASD and summarizes the state of the literature, specifically scientific rigor, risk of bias, and reporting of parent and child demographics, nature and format of interventions, functional assessment of challenging behaviors, and follow-up and social validity data. Results show that many studies have rigor levels that allow for initial evidence of treatment effects, and that risk of bias is variable across domains. Further, demographic information is commonly underreported, particularly with respect to parent participants, and generalization, maintenance, and social validity data are lacking. However, studies frequently report that interventions are provided in natural settings, and that functional assessments are typically conducted, often with parent involvement. Future directions are suggested.