QUB PhD student Amy Tanner, supervised by Dr Katerina Dounavi, was interviewed by Global News in Canada. Amy provided details of the study completed with a 13-month old infant with ASD symptoms focusing on training parents to use daily routines to teach imitation, joint-attention and verbal behavior.
The present study used a behavior skills training package to teach parent-mediated behavior intervention with a 13-month old infant who presented with autism symptoms. The intervention consisted of twelve 1-hour parent coaching sessions, focusing on using daily routines such as mealtimes and play, to teach imitation, joint-attention and verbal behavior with their 13-month old infant. Five-minute videos were recorded at the start of every other session. Two parent and three infant target behaviors were scored using partial interval recording. Results indicated that 12 sessions of teaching parent-mediated intervention increased appropriate target behaviors across both infant and parent and decreased challenging target behavior and the presence of autism symptoms by the completion of the 12th session of the intervention.