The effectiveness of mother delivered video modeling on teaching play skills to children with autism

Video modeling is one of the evidence-based practices for teaching individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Research has shown that this teaching strategy is effective in teaching many skills from different domains such as self-care, social or academic skills. However, video clips were prepared either by teachers or researchers in these studies. Therefore, it can be argued that teaching family members to develop video clips and to provide teaching via video modeling reliably is important. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether (a) mothers were able to learn to develop video clips and deliver video modeling to teach a play skill to their children (age 4-6) with autism spectrum disorders, (b) children acquired and maintained the play skill and generalized it across novel situations. The target play skill was making a Lego train. Social validity data from mothers were collected in the study as well. The study was conducted by using multiple probe design across participants. The findings of the study showed that all mothers were able to use video modeling with high-level treatment integrity. All participant children acquired, preserved and generalized the target skill. Social validity data were positive overall. Key Words: Video modeling, autism spectrum disorders, play skills, parent training, treatment integrity