Our approach in the previous funding years of this project has been to assess the effectiveness of a parent training approach to the treatment of autism. Previous studies indicate that this is a very effective treatment format, but seems to have some limitations due to the extreme lack of motivation and unresponsiveness to multiple cues characteristic of autistic children. Therefore, the purpose of the proposed renewal study is to systematically compare a new parent-training program that focuses on teaching the parents to treat the above pivotal responses (motivation and responsivity to multiple cues) versus a control group of parents who receive the existing parent-training program (which focuses on teaching numerous individual target behaviors). We hypothesize differential effects, favoring the pivotal response training, on three sets of dependent measures. These include measures of child behavior, measures of family stress, and social validation assessments of the significance of the treatment changes.
| Schreibman, Laura; Stahmer, Aubyn C (2014) A randomized trial comparison of the effects of verbal and pictorial naturalistic communication strategies on spoken language for young children with autism. J Autism Dev Disord 44:1244-51 |
| Cunningham, Allison B (2012) Measuring change in social interaction skills of young children with autism. J Autism Dev Disord 42:593-605 |
| Schreibman, Laura; Stahmer, Aubyn C; Barlett, Valerie Cestone et al. (2009) Brief Report: Toward Refinement of a Predictive Behavioral Profile for Treatment Outcome in Children with Autism. Res Autism Spectr Disord 3:163-172 |
| Cunningham, Allison B; Schreibman, Laura (2008) Stereotypy in Autism: The Importance of Function. Res Autism Spectr Discord 2:469-479 |
