Training Parents in Saudi Arabia to Implement Discrete-Trial Teaching with Their Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background:

Applied Behavior Analytic (ABA) services for children with autism in Saudi Arabia are presently scarce. Children with autism who could benefit from such services are unable to obtain them. Involving parents in the implementation of certain ABA techniques may help increasing the number of children who may benefit from the training.

Objectives:

The present study evaluates the effects of a behavioral skills training package on parents implementation of discrete-trial teaching with their children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Methods:

Three parent-child dyads participated in the study. The effects of the training package on parent implementation and child responding were evaluated using a multiple-probe design. The primary dependent variable was parent implementation of Discrete Trial Teaching . Specifically, parents were scored on the extent to which they: 1) completed a brief mini-preference assessment (choice between two items); 2) required eye contact with the child for at least 1 second prior to the instruction; 3) waited until the child was ready (i.e., no problem behavior) before providing instructions; 4) gave a clear instruction relevant to the task; 5) implemented a least-to-most error correction procedure within 5 s of the instruction after the student failed to respond or responded incorrectly; 6) provided immediate reinforcement for correct responses (using item identified in #1); 7) used behavior-specific praise; and 8) recorded the data for each trial. Child behavior was also measured throughout, and consisted of the child engaging in the correct response (specific to the instructional task) within 5 s of the discriminative stimulus.

Results:

The training package improved implementation for all three of the mothers. Moreover, these improvements generalized to skills that were not taught during training, maintained during follow-up probes, and resulted in improvements in child behavior.

Conclusions:

Overall our results support pervious published studies using this behavioral skills training. The results of the present study show that a brief Behavioral Skills Training program can improve the implementation of discrete-trial teaching with parents of children with ASD in Saudi Arabia.