Efficiency of parent training on mothers? use of naturalistic language treatment procedures

This study researched the effectiveness of parent training on mothers, who had children exhibiting limited language skills; a) Their use of Natural Language Intervention Procedures, b) Generalizing of the procedures to routine activities at their homes and c) use of the procedures with the same efficiency two-four weeks after the procedures were taught.The subjects of the study were children with mental retardation attending to the first grade of Kocaeli Gebze Eğitim Uygulama Okulu ve İş Okulu and exhibiting limited language skills, and children?s mothers. Among the single subject experimental designs, ?Multiple Probe Design Across Behaviors? was used.With the aim of teaching mothers Natural Language Intervention Procedures, a parent training program was constituted. This parent training program included informing, exemplifying the procedures, discussion of the importance of the procedures, and application sessions.The process of the experiment was applied to mothers in six phases. These phases were baseline, baseline of generalization, implementing of the parent training program, assessment after the program, generalization after the program and assessment of the procedures whether they had the same efficiency two-four weeks later after training of the procedures have been completed. Parent training program was applied to the mothers one-to-one, first with ?Modeling?, second with ?Expanding? and third with ?Mand-Modeling?.In order to gather data, mother-child interactions in play settings were recorded by a video camera both before and after the parent training program. With the aim of determining the frequency of mothers? use of Natural Language Intervention Procedures, data were written down with the help of a data gathering form. Generalization data were written down with the same method during the routine activities of children at their homes. A social validity form was applied to mothers afterwards the data about the mothers? use of procedures with the same efficiency two-four weeks after the procedure training were gathered, and social validity data were achieved.Line graphs and bar graphs were used in order to display the research data. Data were interpreted by visual analysis.Consequently, parent training program was efficient in mothers?, who had children with limited language skills, use of ?Modeling, Expanding and Mand-Modeling? among the Natural Language Intervention Procedures, generalizing of the procedures to their homes, and maintaining the same efficiency of the procedures two-four weeks after the procedure training.