<p> Parents play an essential role in furthering the development of their children with special needs. They are being trained to be co-therapists for their own children. The goal is to improve the ways they interact with their children in order to create improvements in their children's everyday functioning. If the proper teaching strategies are consistently applied, a learner can significantly improve his/her performance of various life skills, including communication, self-care, social skills, along with other skill sets. Because adults' learning processes differ substantially from children's, it will be critical to utilize the "coaching" method that employs a Model-Lead-Test (MLT) approach to effectively train parents of children with autism. The primary purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of model-lead-test coaching on parents' use of prompting, fading, and reinforcement with their children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The secondary purpose is to assess whether there are improvements in the children's talker, participator, and problem solver repertoires associated with their parents' use of these behavior change processes. </p><p> Using a multiple baseline across behavior design for each parent-child dyad, data are collected on parents' proper use of reinforcement, prompting, and fading as well as their children's talker, participator, and problem solver repertoire development. Research phases include baseline, parent training I (Oral Lecture), parent training II (Model-Lead-Test), and maintenance. </p><p> The resulting data from this study indicate that the Model-Lead-Test approach to parent implementation of core ABA strategies has a greater impact than merely using an Oral Lecture Discussion approach to parent training. To summarize, the data from all three participants showed an increase in the proper implementation of reinforcement, prompting and fading procedures especially through MLT training. The child participants also showed an increase in their talker, participator and problem solver repertoires. And finally, interpretation of the data is presented along with possible future guidelines for research. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3701954 |
| Date | 20 May 2015 |
| Creators | Chen, Liyu |
| Publisher | West Virginia University |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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