Evaluating Telehealth Parent Training to Teach Behavioral Chains to Children with Autism

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

Summer 2023

First Committee Member

Dickson, Chata A.

Second Committee Member

Thompson, Rachel H.

Abstract

Behavioral skills training (BST) is an evidence-based training package that includes instructions, modeling, roleplay, and feedback. Research has demonstrated BST can be used to effectively train parents, but most of these studies have been conducted in person. There are several limitations to in-person services, such as accessibility and affordability, that may make telehealth alternatives valuable. The purpose of this study was to add to the literature by implementing BST via telehealth to teach parents how to prompt their child on an arbitrary task (e.g., 12-step Lego building task, adapted from McKay et al., 2014) with graduated guidance, and to examine if this training leads to the generalized use of graduated guidance to teach meaningful daily living skills. In a multiple-baseline-across-parents design, telehealth BST was implemented until graduated guidance performance on the arbitrary task met mastery criterion, and then probes were conducted on parent’s use of graduated guidance in a preselected daily living skill with their child. Parents’ performance met mastery criterion via telehealth in an average of 100 min, and generalization of prompting to daily living skills was observed for both parents. These findings suggest that the use of an arbitrary task for training via telehealth can be effective and lead to generalized performances in teaching more important tasks to children with autism such as daily living skills.

This document is available upon request to Western New England University faculty, students, and staff. Please contact D'Amour Library at dref@wne.edu for access.

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