The impact of a telehealth platform on ABA-based parent training targeting social communication in children with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Interventions based upon applied behaviour analysis (ABA) have been shown to be best practice for children with autism spectrum disorder. However, in many parts of the world there is a shortage of appropriately trained behaviour analysts. Telehealth is a potential solution to increasing access to ABA. Our study assessed the use of telehealth to provide parent training in naturalistic teaching strategies designed to increase child communication skills. Five parent child dyads took part in the training, utilising didactic training and synchronous coaching. Parents could be trained to a high level of fidelity and viewed the training favourably. Children showed variable gains in communication and improved positive affect. The project was cost effective in comparison with traditional training models.

The Efficacy of Using Telehealth to Coach Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder on How to Use Naturalistic Teaching to Increase Mands, Tacts and Intraverbals

“…One parent originally applied for a previous parent training project having seen a recruitment poster on a parenting social media post. They were deemed to be ineligible for the first project as they had prior training in ABA (Ferguson et al, 2022) but were subsequently invited to take part in the present study. The second parent was recruited through word of mouth, via advertisements on parent support groups and Facebook pages.…”

“…Parents' knowledge of ABA theory was also tested at this stage by asking parents to complete a 20-point multiple choice test. Prior to completing the test parents were provided free access to didactic training materials, consisting of six PDFs covering ABA theory and six associated Prezi presentations used in a prior research project with the aim to offer them a theory recap resource that they could consult independently if they wished to (Ferguson et al, 2022).…”

“…of research have indicated that interventions based upon the principles of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) are best placed to support individuals who have received a diagnosis of ASD (e.g., Hume et al, 2021;Makrygianni & Reed, 2010;Reichow et al, 2018;Wong et al, 2014); evidence of efficacy has included strategies shown to enhance social communication skills (e.g., Ingersoll et al, 2017;McGarry et al, 2019;Tanner & Dounavi, 2020). Furthermore, training parents in intervention procedures has demonstrable positive outcomes in terms of child communication and parental upskilling and empowerment (Antill, 2020;Degli Espinosa et al, 2020;Ferguson et al, 2022;Guomundsdottir et al, 2017); in fact, parent implemented intervention has accumulated enough of a research base to be considered as an evidence based practice (Hume et al, 2021).…”

“…Researchers found promising gains in parental fidelity and provided a very useful framework for cultural adaptions but did not report on child outcomes. Most recently, Ferguson et al (2022) provided a demonstration of the efficacy of using a telehealth platform to teach parents residing in the UK and Ireland social communication strategies. Results were consistent with US-based research as parents displayed increases in fidelity but variability in child communication outcomes was present (Ferguson et al, 2019;Neely et al, 2021).…”

Effectiveness of a Brief Functional Analysis and Functional Communication Training Conducted Through Telehealth

“…To date, the literature surrounding telehealth has shown positive outcomes (Craig et al, 2021;Ferguson et al, 2019Ferguson et al, , 2022aFerguson et al, , 2022b. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, numerous studies have evaluated the use of telehealth to provide behaviour analytic interventions to teach a number of skills to individuals with ASD such as functional living skills (Boutain et al, 2020;Craig et al, 2021;Gerow et al, 2021a), communication, (D'Agostino et al, 2020Ferguson et al, 2022aFerguson et al, , 2022b, and tolerating wearing a face mask (Sivaraman et al, 2021). Further, research before and during COVID-19 has also examined telehealth as a platform that facilitates functional behaviour assessments such as FA ).…”