The effectiveness of reciprocal imitation training on mother and child behaviours provided with coach support to mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder

Imitation skills are among the important skills in a child's development in early childhood. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit limited imitation skills and limited behavior compared to their typically developing peers. Based on this limitation, this study aimed to examine the effects of the coaching application offered to mothers within the scope of Reciprocal Imitation Training (RIT) on the acquisition of imitation skills of their children with ASD. In addition, after the training ended, the level of use of the RIT intervention that the mothers learned with the support of coaching and the views of the mothers participating in the study on the social validity of the study were discussed. The study was carried out with three mother-child pairs. The age of mothers is between 29 and 38, and the age of children is between 24 and 48 months. The research was implemented by designing and implementing the multiple probe model with pairs (mother-child) probes design, one of the single-subject research models, nested within each other. The study's findings showed that the coaching practice affected the mothers' learning to use the RIT intervention, maintaining the RIT practice after the intervention ended, and generalizing it to different environments. At the same time, it has been determined that the RIT application offered with coaching support is effective on children's acquisition of object and gesture imitation skills, and on their generalization of these acquired skills to different environments and routines. The social validity data of the study show that the mothers expressed a positive opinion about the coaching and RIT applications.