The effects of coaching on teaching skills of parents and communication skills of their children with autism spectrum disorder

This study aims to examine the effects of parent coaching including video feedback on parents' ability to use incidental teaching and the effects of incidental teaching used by parents on communication skills of their children with autism spectrum disorder. Moreover, after the all sessions of the study completed, the frequency of parents' use of web-based coaching and parents' opinions about coaching and incidental teaching were examined. Three mothers aged between 33 and 38 years and their children with autism spectrum disorders aged between 4 and 5 participated in the study. A nested multiple probe design across parent-child dyads was used to determine the effectiveness of parent coaching and the effectiveness of incidental teaching. Results showed that parents acquired the ability to use the incidental teaching with %100 accuracy, maintained the acquired teaching behaviors over time, and generalized them across different settings and also children acquired the targeted communication skills, maintained them over time, and generalized them across different persons, settings and routines. In addition, results of the frequency of parents' use of web-based coaching showed that parents watched only educational videos on web-based coaching site. Last, the opinions of the parents about the social validty of the study were positive.