Date of Award

6-2007

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Linda LeBlanc

Second Advisor

Dr. James E. Carr

Third Advisor

Dr. John Austin

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorders have a substantial impact on the lives of families and can result in a variety of enrichments to the family environment as well as certain specific stressors (Hecimovic & Gregory, 2005; Tidmarsh & Volkmar, 2003). One service that has proven effective for treatment of individuals with autism spectrum disorders as well as improvement in family dynamics is parent training (Schreibman, 1988). The current study examined 46 individual client files from an outpatient parent training clinic serving children with autism spectrum disorders. Parents were taught to implement interventions for skill acquisition with their children using a behavioral skills training model (BST). The most common skill targets identified collaboratively by parents and clinicians were social skills targets, communication targets, and incontinence. Multiple intervention strategies were recommended by clinicians and learned by parents including BST, chaining, token economy, discrete trial teaching techniques, intensive toilet training procedures, PECS training, mand training techniques, natural language paradigm (NLP). Parents were able to demonstrate mastery across the variety of instructional strategies and demonstrated high rates of procedural integrity across all interventions.

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