A Brief Coaching Intervention for Teaching Naturalistic Strategies to Parents

Abstract

Coaching parents to implement evidence-based strategies is one method for increasing the number of hours young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) access intervention services. The purpose of this study was to teach parents of young children with ASD to implement naturalistic strategies during play in a clinic setting. Results indicate a brief coaching procedure was effective for training parents to implement behavioral strategies, with concomitant changes in child behavior. Additional research is needed to determine how to facilitate maintenance over time and whether effects generalize to typical settings.

Assessing Parent Implementation of Behavior Support Strategies and Self-Monitoring to Enhance Maintenance

“…Findings from the first research question, regarding parent’s ability to master the skills using general teaching strategies, are consistent with Barton and Fettig’s (2013) and provide additional support for the continuation of behavioral skill training. Furthermore, the brevity of training (3–5 sessions, 1 hr each maximum) is consistent with the brief training required by Lane et al (2016) (i.e., 3–7 1-hr sessions for each of the 3 skills). This study extends Lane et al by teaching different skills to parents, using naturalistic approaches in the home setting, and targeting a different population of children.…”

“…This study extends Lane et al by teaching different skills to parents, using naturalistic approaches in the home setting, and targeting a different population of children. In addition, Lane et al (2016) called for investigation into parents’ ability to demonstrate skills outside of clinician presence to better understand the lasting effectiveness of brief training packages; something this study incorporated.…”

“…A systematic protocol for instructing parents was used that outlined the training procedures and sequence. The protocol was based on the common teaching practices outlined in Barton and Fettig (2013) using teaching procedures with demonstrated evidence of effectiveness in training behavioral skills to parents (Lane et al, 2016). The researcher used a form for direct instruction, outlining the purpose and rationale, definition, and how to implement the skill along with examples and nonexamples of each of the three behavior support strategies to be taught.…”

“…First, parents have the most frequent and continual presence in their child’s life (Marcus et al, 2001; Maughan et al, 2005) and thus have the ability to provide interventions within the natural environment for extended amounts of time (Maughan et al, 2005). In addition, this approach may also address long wait times to receive services (Lane et al, 2016), possible specialist shortages due to increasing demand (Maughan et al, 2005), and families who are isolated geographically (Subramaniam et al, 2017). Furthermore, parent education and training has been validated by positive outcomes that have demonstrated parents are able to learn and implement intervention strategies leading to positive child gains (Lundahl et al, 2006).…”

A Pilot Study of Universal Teacher–Child Interaction Training at a Therapeutic Preschool for Young Maltreated Children

“…These behaviors are often targeted in early childhood special education, however, can have different terminology. For instance, behavioral descriptions have been referred to as narration or mapping (Kaiser & Roberts, 2013; Lane et al, 2016); reflections have been called language expansions (Barton & Wolery, 2007; Kaiser & Roberts, 2013); and labeled and unlabeled praises have also been termed as behavior-specific and general praise, respectively (Barton & Wolery, 2007; Royer, Lane, Dunlap, & Ennis, 2016).…”