The low intensity in-home parent training in applied behavior analysis for preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Lin, Yu-Wen
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of a low intensity in-home parent training which adopted applied behavior analysis (ABA) on the problem behaviors of two children with autism. The aim of parent training is to help the parents to develop specific skills of training their children, and reduce their problem behaviors. Parents have two roles in this program. They are trainees when trained by therapists and trainers when they provide treatment to their own children. In this paper, we present results of a parent training program, including parents as trainers or trainees, with relatively low intensity of training in both situations.
The mothers of two different autistic children were recruited and trained by the researcher, an occupational therapist, during weekly one-hour home visits. The parents were trained to provide intervention to their children 0.5 hour weekly for 8 weeks, and all the interventions were videotaped. Both child and parent outcomes were assessed before and after intervention along with a monthly follow-up for two months. Both visual inspection and statistical analysis (C statistic) were used to analyze data.
For Case 1, two feeding related behaviors were the intervention target, i.e., screaming and turning head to avoid feeding when being fed by mother. The results indicated parent training program can teach parents to effectively reduce the screaming behaviors of Case 1(C=0.38, Z=2.1). Despite no statistically significant differences, a trend of decreasing head-turning behaviors was noted during the intervention phase (C=0.27, Z=1.48) as compared to the baseline phase.
For Case 2, the first target behavior was neck-pulling behavior. During the intervention phase, the frequency of the behavior was not significantly lower than that in baseline phase (C=0.24, Z=1.03). The second target is the discrimination ability of Case 2 after he received training on three different discrimination tasks, i.e., simple motor imitation, following instructions to do simple motor actions, and verbal comprehension (receptive language). Results showed that Case 2’ s discriminative ability did appear in the imitation trials (C= -0.6, Z= -2.06) and the receptive language trials (C=0.91, Z=2.94) across the baseline phase and the intervention phase, but difference of the rate of correct response did not reach the statistically significant level across the first two phases in the instruction trials (C=0.34, Z=1.19).
Overall, children’s problem behaviors decreased following parent’s intervention. Parents’ fidelity in implementing ABA principles improved during the training phase, and generally the improvement was maintained at the maintenance phase. Further research on the effectiveness of intervention with different levels of intensity is warranted to provide clinicians and parents the cost-effective intervention model.
Subjects
autism
parent training
home services
Type
thesis
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