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