Teaching parents effective skills to decrease behavior problems in children with ASD: A brief intervention
Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Study designs: Randomized Controlled Trial, Clinical Trial
Abstract: The current study evaluated a brief behavior management intervention to teach parenting skills, functional assessment techniques, and intervention strategies to parents of children with ASD to provide them with skills to better manage their child’s misbehaviors. The child’s behavior problem intensity and autistic symptomology were assessed as well as parents’ stress, parenting skills, and satisfaction with treatment. Participants included 20 parents of children with ASD between the ages of three and seven. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups or the control group. The treatment groups included the following: one treatment group received the child-directed interaction (CDI) didactic component of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), another treatment group received information to conduct a functional assessment (FA) of problem behavior, and another treatment group received both of these components. Results revealed a significant reduction in behavior problems for the CDI-only and FA-only treatment groups over-time and a significant difference between the CDI-only group and the CDI + FA and control group from pre- to post-intervention. Although there was not a significant reduction in behavior problems for the CDI + FA group, there was a significant increase in the use of positive verbalizations from pre- to post-intervention, and parents in the CDI-only and CDI + FA group reported high satisfaction with treatment. There was no significant difference in parenting stress for any groups. Implications of these results including broad clinical implications and implications for modifying behavioral parent training for this population will be discussed. Additionally, recommendations of future directions for clinical practice and research such as including a larger sample size, conducting behavioral functional assessment to determine the function of problem behavior, and a more specific characterization of children that would most benefit from this type of treatment will be described.
Author: T. Lindsey Burrell
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Texas Tech University
OpenAlex ID: W2795356950