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Teaching Initiated Question Asking to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Through a Short-Term Parent-Mediated Program

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Abstract

This study investigated whether a brief parent-mediated intervention would increase the frequency of question asking in children with ASD. Mothers participated in a 3-week training consisting of 2-h sessions twice weekly. Data were collected in the context of concurrent multiple baseline design. Results demonstrate all three children increased frequency of question asking with two children maintaining gains. All three children demonstrated generalization of question asking to novel items, family members, and/or settings. Affect improved for two of the three children. Overall, mothers were able to reach Fidelity of Implementation during most sessions and rated the intervention as highly acceptable. Results are discussed in regard to the feasibility of providing a short-term parent-implemented intervention to increase social initiations through question asking.

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Acknowledgments

Lynn Koegel is a partner in the private company Koegel Autism Consultants, LLC. The first author would like to thank all of the families who participated in the research along with the Koegel Autism Consultants, LLC for their endless support during training. The authors do not list any other acknowledgments, have financial information to disclose, or author notes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, ON, N9B 3P4, Canada

    Svetlana C. Popovic & Elizabeth M. Starr

  2. Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Child Development, Stanford University, 410 Quarry Road, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Lynn K. Koegel

Authors
  1. Svetlana C. Popovic
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  2. Elizabeth M. Starr
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  3. Lynn K. Koegel
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Contributions

SCP and EMS conceptualized the research query. SCP wrote the initial manuscript draft, participated in the design of the methodology as well as engaged in the analysis and discussion. EMS verified the analysis, edited the manuscript, and participated in writing portions of the discussion. LKK also edited the manuscript and contributed to portions of the methodology and discussion.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Svetlana C. Popovic.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study as well as throughout the study.

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In compliance with ethical standards, all procedures performed in this study involving human subjects were accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee. These include the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Popovic, S.C., Starr, E.M. & Koegel, L.K. Teaching Initiated Question Asking to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Through a Short-Term Parent-Mediated Program. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 3728–3738 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04426-2

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