The effect of a parent-implemented imitation intervention on spontaneous imitation skills in young children with autism

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Abstract

Children with autism exhibit significant deficits in their ability to spontaneously imitate the play actions and descriptive gestures of others. Reciprocal imitation training (RIT) is a naturalistic imitation intervention designed to teach spontaneous imitation skills during play. This study assessed the effectiveness of parent-implemented RIT using a multiple-baseline design across three young children with autism and their mothers. After an initial baseline, mothers were taught to implement RIT techniques with their child twice a week for 10 weeks in a clinic setting. Two mothers were taught to use RIT to teach object imitation. The third mother was taught to use RIT to target both object and gesture imitation in a multiple-baseline design across behaviors. Generalization was assessed in the families’ homes at the end of treatment and a 1-month follow-up. Parents learned to use the intervention strategies and their children exhibited increases in spontaneous imitation. These findings replicate the results from previous studies, indicating that RIT is effective for teaching imitation skills to young children with autism in a naturalistic setting and extend the findings to parents.

Section snippets

Participants

Three young children with autism and their mothers participated. The children were diagnosed by an outside professional with expertise in autism. Diagnoses were confirmed by the first author using DSM-IV-TR criteria (APA, 2000). At intake, the children were administered the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, 2nd ed. (Bayley, 1993) or Mullen Scales of Early Learning (Mullen, 1995) to determine developmental age and the Motor Imitation Scale (MIS; Stone et al., 1997) to determine imitation

Reciprocity strategies

During baseline, Conrad's and Alicia's mothers rarely used contingent imitation, while Luke's mother used a moderate amount. All three mothers used a moderate amount of linguistic mapping prior to training. With the onset of Phase I of treatment, all three mothers increased their use of contingent imitation. Conrad and Alicia's mothers maintained this higher rate throughout treatment, while Luke's mother returned to baseline rates in Phase II. All mothers also increased their use of linguistic

Discussion

Parents of young children with autism can be taught to use RIT to enhance their children's spontaneous imitation skills. All parents increased their use of the intervention strategies in the clinic setting and the home, and maintained these skills at the 1-month follow-up. All children increased their object imitation and Luke increased his gesture imitation. The parents reported high levels of satisfaction with the outcomes of the intervention and the training procedure itself.

This study

Acknowledgment

This study was supported by a grant from the Organization for Autism Research. We are grateful to the children and their families who participated in this research. We would also like to thank Elsa D’Angelo and Johnny Askew for their assistance in the data collection.

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