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An Evaluation of Behavioral Skills Training for Teaching Caregivers How to Support Social Skill Development in Their Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

Limited research has explored how to best train caregivers to support their child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) despite caregivers being well suited to promote generalization and maintenance of their child’s skills in the natural environment. Children with ASD have been shown to benefit from social skill training, which is not always conducted in the natural context. This research examined the efficacy of behavioral skills training (BST) with, and without in situ training (IST), for teaching caregivers how to also use BST to support their child’s context-specific social skills. Although caregivers met mastery criterion within BST sessions, their skills did not generalize to the natural environment until IST was introduced. The implications of the findings are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

The project was completed as a portion of the first author’s Master of Arts thesis. The authors would like to thank Karen Chartier, the program director at Lake Ridge Community Support Services, all staff members who helped support the project, and the caregivers and children who participated in the study.

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Author notes

  1. James Haesen

    Present address: Monarch House, Oakville, ON, Canada

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Disability Studies, Brock University, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, ON, L2S 3A1, Canada

    Mahfuz Hassan & Kendra Thomson

  2. Lake Ridge Community Support Services, 900 Hopkins Street, Whitby, ON, L1N 6A9, Canada

    Andrea Simpson, Katey Danaher, James Haesen & Tanya Makela

Authors
  1. Mahfuz Hassan
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  2. Andrea Simpson
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  3. Katey Danaher
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  4. James Haesen
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  6. Kendra Thomson
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Contributions

All authors participated in the conception of the study and participated in the design and the manuscript preparation. KT and MH lead the design and interpretation of the data; AS and JH participated in the acquisition of data. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kendra Thomson.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee (Tri-Council standards) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

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

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Hassan, M., Simpson, A., Danaher, K. et al. An Evaluation of Behavioral Skills Training for Teaching Caregivers How to Support Social Skill Development in Their Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 48, 1957–1970 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3455-z

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