The effects of a telehealth parent training package on child communication across verbal operants

There is a growing body of evidence supporting the use of telehealth to provide parent training in behaviour analytical interventions and researchers have begun to focus on international demonstrations of this model. Given the recent changes to the Behavior Analysts Certification Board (BACB) international credentialing and lockdowns imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic this is a very pertinent area of research. This presentation will discuss our study, which trained parents of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in naturalistic teaching strategies, designed to provide them with methods to increase social communication behaviour across verbal operants. Two parent-child dyads were taught to increase mand, tact and intraverbal behaviour during play. Parents displayed increases in fidelity for each strategy and viewed training favourable. Both children showed gains across verbal operants, as captured by a multiple baseline across behaviour design.