Elsevier

Research in Developmental Disabilities

Volume 28, Issue 1, January–February 2007, Pages 23-36
Research in Developmental Disabilities

Parent training: Acquisition and generalization of discrete trials teaching skills with parents of children with autism

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2005.10.003Get rights and content

Abstract

This study examined the effects of an intensive parent training program on the acquisition and generalization of discrete trial teaching (DTT) procedures with two parents of children with autism. Over the course of the program, parents applied the DTT procedures to teach four different functional skills to their children, which allowed for an assessment of “free” and programmed generalization across stimulus exemplars. Parent training was conducted by the first author utilizing instructions, demonstrations, role-play, and practice with feedback. Parents’ use of DTT skills and children's correct and incorrect responding were measured. A within-subject multiple-baseline across stimulus exemplars (functional skills taught) design was employed both to demonstrate control of the training program over parents’ correct use of DTT, and to allow a preliminary investigation of the generalized effects of training to multiple stimulus exemplars. Results demonstrate initial control of the training program over parent responding, and the extent to which each parent extended her use of DTT procedures across untrained and topographically different child skills. The potential for designing more generalizable and thus more cost-effective parent training programs is discussed.

Section snippets

Participants and setting

Participants were two mothers of children with autism; Melissa had two children, Jina had one child. Both mothers were married to their children's biological father and described themselves as “homemakers”. Both were high school graduates, and had received some higher education. Melissa's son, Jason, was 4 years old and diagnosed with autism and severe mental retardation. Jina's son, Nevin, was 4 years old and diagnosed with autism. Both boys had documented deficits in language/communication

Parent behaviors

Fig. 1, Fig. 2 display data on the acquisition and generalization of DTT procedures for the two parents, Melissa and Jina. Fig. 1 displays the percent of correct teaching by trial for Melissa, extending across the child skills of attending, writing, counting and indicating preference (choosing). During baseline, Melissa's correct use of DTT across all child-skills averaged 5% (range, 1–9%). Following parent training, her correct use of DTT for “attending” (top panel) increased immediately, from

Discussion

Results of this study demonstrate that two parents were able to acquire a well-defined set of behaviors for teaching their children with autism. This study adds to previous findings in the parent training literature by providing repeated-measures data on the generality of parent learning. Both parents improved their teaching across child skills before receiving training on all child skills, although this effect required fewer exemplars and was more striking with Jina than with Melissa. Our

Acknowledgements

This study was completed as partial fulfillment for the Masters of Science degree for the first author. The authors would like to thank Karen Green and Cristian Cox for their assistance in data collection and analysis. The authors would also like to thank Samera Baird and Jim Johnston for their service as thesis committee members.

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    1

    Present address: University of Massachusetts Medical School and The Shriver Center, Waltham, MA, USA.

    2

    Present address: Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA.

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