Clinicianless Training in Autism Treatment: An Adaptive Online Parent Education Program
Abstract
This research project focused on the development and evaluation of a self-directed smartphone application designed to facilitate mass dissemination of a parent training program in Pivotal Response Treatment, a well-established and highly effective intervention for young children with autism. We evaluated two versions of this app in a randomized clinical trial with 48 families living in the United States. One version of the app was a traditional training app with eight learning modules, video examples, practice opportunities, and the ability to record and upload parent-child practice videos. The other version of the app also contained the ability to review and self-score ones performance in order to get feedback on one's mastery of the intervention techniques. Outcomes from the project revealed that use of the self-scoring app version was associated with superior parent mastery of the intervention strategies (fidelity of implementation) when compared to those the non-self-scoring app condition. Participant use of either app was associated with comparable improvements in child expressive language use and responsiveness, with families in both conditions completing a similar number of in-app learning modules.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2023
- Accession Number
- AD1228198
Entities
People
- Ty W Vernon
Organizations
- University of California, Santa Barbara