Project ImPACT: Training parents and teachers to stimulate the social-communicative abilities of children with ASD in daily situations

Background and objectives: There is a growing consensus that intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) should include their natural interaction partners. Training parents and teachers to stimulate the... [ view full abstract ]

Background and objectives: There is a growing consensus that intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) should include their natural interaction partners. Training parents and teachers to stimulate the social-communicative abilities of children with ASD in daily routines is a cost-effective intervention method, which helps children generalize skills to a broad range of situations. Project ImPACT, a social communication intervention of 24 sessions, has been originally developed to train parents. In the present study we aimed to look at the added value of training not only parents, but also teachers with this intervention programme.
Methodology: We used a multiple baseline design with four children with ASD between 2.5 and 6 years old. Parents and teachers each received 24 sessions at home and in the school respectively. Treatment effect was assessed by weekly observations of parent-child and teacher-child interaction. Communication, social engagement, imitation and play skills of the children and parent and teacher behaviour are currently being coded from the videos.
Results: Preliminary results show an effect of the intervention on the duration of social engagement during parent-child interaction for all four children and for three children also during teacher-child interaction. However, the effect on the number of child initiations is much more clear during teacher-child interaction (improvement in all children), than during parent-child interaction (improvement in two children). Results of the other outcome measures will be presented at the congress.
Conclusions: Preliminary findings support the conclusion that a combined approach of parent and teacher training creates added value.

The study design was prospectively reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the faculty where the study was conducted. All participants signed an informed consent prior to participation in the study. They were... [ view full abstract ]

The study design was prospectively reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the faculty where the study was conducted. All participants signed an informed consent prior to participation in the study. They were informed that all personal data would be treated confidentially and that they could end their particpation, whenever they chose to do so.

The authors declare no potential conflict of intrest.