Elsevier

Behavior Therapy

Volume 22, Issue 4, Autumn 1991, Pages 479-490
Behavior Therapy

Positive affect of parents of autistic children: A comparison across two teaching techniques*

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7894(05)80340-5Get rights and content

While the positive effects of behavioral parent training programs on children with developmental disabilities are well documented, relatively little attention has been focused on the effects of such programs on the parents. One important area of effect relates to the parents' positive affect while implementing such programs. The purpose of this investigation was to conduct a comparison of parental affect across two parent training programs. Naive judges were asked to rate positive affect of parents as they worked in one-on-one training sessions with their children. The parents implemented either a highly structured, discrete-trial procedure or a more naturalistic pivotal response training procedure. Results indicated that the parents implementing the pivotal response training procedure were rated as exhibiting significantly more positive affect than those parents implementing the discrete-trial procedure. The implications of these results on the design of parent training programs are discussed.

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    *

    This research was supported by U.S.P.H.S. Research Grants 39434 and 28210 from the National Institute of Mental Health and by NIDRR Cooperative Agreement # G0087CO234 from the U.S. Department of Education. The authors are indebted to Jeffrey Lizerbram, Dennis Wahlgren, and Dr. John Polich for their contributions to this research.

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