Developing Generalized Teaching Skills in Mothers of Autistic Children

Abstract

An education program designed to assist parents in teaching adaptive behavior skills to their autistic children is described. During training, mothers were trained through the use of written materials, modeling, behavioral rehearsal, and oral feedback to use prompting and reward techniques. To facilitate generalization, an additional instructional program with informational, problem-solving, and self-monitoring components was employed. Training procedures were introduced in either a sequential or a simultaneous fashion to eight mother-child dyads. Assessments of multiple maternal and child behaviors were conducted in a play training situation and also in two nontrageted generalization teaching situations. After training, mothers displayed the skill taught and children showed an increase in targeted behaviors as well as a decrease in noncompliance in all three situations. A component analysis revealed that skills training alone was sufficient to produce generalized changes in maternal teaching behavior. The implications of these results for the development of effective training programs are discussed.