The Effects of a Parents Training Program on Joint Attention Intervention for Preschool Children with Autism

Background: The joint attention (JA) is supposed to be one of the core deficits of autism. If JA deficit could be treated for children with autism in early intervention programs, the prospective effect will be optimistic. However, most JA intervention programs only pinpoint to children with autism only. Therefore, the effect size of JA intervention was not optimistic based on the follow-up studies. If the therapy roles could be transferred to parents, parents can intervene for their children anytime and anywhere.

Objectives: This study developed a parents training program on JA intervention for young children with autism and examined the effect of parent training program.

Methods: A single subject research method with multiple probes across behaviors design was adopted. Three parents of children with autism who were under four-year olds participated in this study. The independence variable was parent training program on joint attention intervention. The dependent variables were three target behaviors for parents, including nonverbal interactions, using nonverbal communicative gestures, and sharing with gaze which were important for promoting JA behaviors for children with autism.

Results: The results indicate that the parents’ performance of three target behaviors was improved a lot. Furthermore, the frequency of joint attention of the preschool children with autism is highly correlated with parents’ three target behaviors.

Conclusions: The results implicate that parents’ training on joint attention intervention is effective and very promising for future studies.