Improved Parent Interaction Style Associated with Improved Child-Parent Joint Engagement 3-Months after a Low-Cost, Group, Parent-Training Workshop

Background:

Parent-implemented interventions for young children with ASD have been found to be associated with improvements in child social engagement (e.g. Casenhiser and Shanker. 2011; Kasari et al.2010; Patterson, Elder, Gulsrud and Kasari, 2013) language (Coolican et al. 2010; Vismara et al. 2009), imitation (Ingersoll and Gergans, 2007), and play (Gillett and LeBlanc 2007). In countries with relatively few trained autism professionals, such as Argentina, parent-implemented interventions may be the only services available for young children with ASD. However, traditional parent training models emphasizing individual coaching sessions are not scalable in countries such as Argentina and very little research has focused on group parent training which has the potential to make training more accessible to families (Minjarez, Williams, Mercier and Hardan, 2011; Ingersoll and Dvortcsak, 2007). This study is a 3-month follow-up to a parent-training program delivered in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Objectives:  

To investigate the relationship between change in parental interaction style following a weekend, group parent-training workshop and changes in parent-child joint engagement 3 months post-training. 

Methods:  

The parent-training program was originally developed for a multi-cultural, low-income, group in the Bronx, NY (Houghton, 2012) then delivered to 24 families in Buenos Aires, Argentina (Hougthon et al, 2013). It teaches parents research-based techniques for encouraging joint engagement embedded in everyday activities at home. 22 families participated in the training program. Video of parent-child free play sessions were taking pre-training, post-training and 3-months post-training. Parent interaction style was coded along the dimensions of Responsivity and Directiveness (Mahoney and Perales, 2003) and parent-child joint engagement coded following Baekman and Adamson (1984) and Kasari et al. (2010).

Results:  

Results show a relationship between parent interaction style post-training and at 3-month follow up and between parent interaction style and parent-child joint engagement at 3-months.

Conclusions:  

A brief, low-cost group parent-training program was shown to improve parent interaction style which was then associated with improved parent-child joint engagement at 3-month follow-up without further training.