Clinicianless Training in Autism Treatment: An Adaptive Online Parent Education Program
Abstract
Despite scientific advances in treatment for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), most families across the United States do not have access to high-quality autism services, let alone the best autism treatment models available. There are a number of reasons for this concerning reality, including the limited number of trained autism clinicians around the country, the rising cost of services, geographic distance from autism service providers, and difficulties in being able to effectively and efficiently train a large number of people in the latest treatment models. This proposed project focuses on the Autism Research Program Clinical Translational Research Award Areas of Interest focused on Dissemination/Implementation of Clinically Validated Interventions and Behavioral Therapies for ASD Core Symptoms. These areas focus on effective strategies for taking what works (in this case, highly effective autism treatments shown to improve social communication and motivation in children with autism) and spreading or distributing these treatments so that they can benefit a much larger portion of the population. This is important because a highly effective treatment is of little use if only people in a few areas can benefit from its effect while the rest of the nation continues to use outdated, less effective strategies. To accomplish the goal of distributing a highly effective intervention to the general public, this proposed study will take advantage of the widespread use of smartphones nationwide. This study proposes to develop and evaluate smartphone apps as a way to train parents of young children with ASD in an autism treatment model known as Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT). Forty-eight families will be recruited nationwide to participate in this trial. PRT is a well-known, scientifically supported treatment that focuses on using child motivation, play-based lessons, and parent involvement to target the language skills and social engagement of children with ASD. The core smartphone app will offer eight interactive lessons in PRT, consisting of video examples, slides, and brief quizzes. After each lesson, parents will be asked to record a brief video of themselves using PRT with their child that is submitted within the app to our research team so that we can monitor their mastery of the strategies over time. We will also ask parents to complete autism-related and developmental surveys before and after participation so that we can monitor how their child is improving. Past research suggests that self-guided autism training (that is, independent learning that relies on the use of online lessons or training videos) is not as effective as face-to-face training with an experienced autism clinician. To address this concern, parents will actually be taught to watch their own videos and score their own performance through question prompts built into the app. When they are finished, the app will offer feedback and follow-up lessons based on the PRT strategies they have not demonstrated consistently. Families in this study will be randomly assigned to use a standard PRT app or this adaptive PRT app with self-scoring to see which one leads to better mastery of PRT and child developmental outcomes. Ultimately, the objective of this trial is to develop and test smartphone apps to deliver a highly effective autism intervention to families nationwide. Use of this technology will ensure that families can access gold standard autism treatment regardless of their geographic locations, work schedules, or financial backgrounds. If successful, we plan to conduct an even larger nationwide study and ultimately make the app available in smartphone app stores so that families everywhere can train themselves in this treatment approach.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 10, 2021
- Source ID
- W81XWH2010248
Entities
People
- Ty W Vernon
Organizations
- United States Army
- University of California, Santa Barbara