Abstract
Researchers implemented a short-term cascading coaching model focusing on naturalistic
developmental behavioral intervention with three participant triads. Triads consisted
of a graduate student clinician, a minimally verbal child with autism spectrum disorder,
and the child's parent. Coaching and intervention occurred during an interprofessional
summer clinic that included graduate student clinicians from special education and
speech and hearing sciences departments. The efficacy of short-term instruction, researcher
coaching for student clinicians, and student clinician coaching of parents was evaluated
using a multiple baseline across participants' design. The dependent variables were
student clinician's and parent's use of elicitation techniques (creating communication
temptations, waiting, and prompting) and response techniques (naturally reinforcing
children's communication and providing spoken language models). Following coaching,
parents and student clinicians from all triads increased their use of elicitation
and response techniques, with very large effect sizes across all variables. Visual
analysis findings suggest individualized differences and variability across triads.
Implications for graduate education and parent coaching programs are discussed.
Keywords
NDBI - autism - parent coaching - graduate education - interprofessional
