Evaluation of a rapport‐building intervention for early interventionists working with children on the autism spectrum
A one-hour BST module taught four EIBI staff to pair like pros and cut kids’ problem behaviors to near zero.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ensor et al. (2024) worked with four early-intervention staff who ran EIBI sessions with preschoolers with autism. The team used a brief BST package to teach each adult how to pair with a child before work began. They measured staff pairing steps and the kids’ interfering behaviors across baseline, training, and follow-up.
What they found
After BST, all four adults hit 100 % of the pairing steps. Kids showed immediate drops in crying, hitting, and running away. Gains held for four weeks with no extra training.
How this fits with other research
The result lines up with Han et al. (2025). Their 2025 meta-analysis of 25 EIBI studies says strong rapport at the start boosts language gains, giving the pairing step real weight.
Scudder et al. (2026) extends the same brief-BST idea to home-based PCIT. Paraprofessionals learned a parent–child play routine and saw child disruptive behavior fall, showing the model travels beyond autism clinics.
Aherne et al. (2019) sounds like a contradiction at first. They saw staff lose DTT accuracy weeks after BST. The gap is in the follow-up tool: Ensor gave no self-monitoring, yet pairing held, while Aherne’s DTT needed a checklist to recover. The tasks differ—rapport is naturally reinforced by happy kids, DTT is not.
Why it matters
You can run the whole package in one afternoon: watch a 10-minute video, role-play with a colleague, take in-vivo feedback, and you’re done. Kids enter the table calm, so teaching trials run smoother and you pack more learning into each hour. Add a 30-second pairing check to your session note template and you have an easy fidelity cue without extra paperwork.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
AbstractRapport, or the therapeutic relationship between a therapist and client, is essential for successful intervention. In behavior analytic interventions for autistic children, practitioners commonly use pairing to establish rapport. A limited body of research has evaluated how to train interventionists to pair with their child clients. Furthermore, fewer studies have examined the effects of pairing on client behavior. Therefore, we implemented behavioral skills training to teach interventionists pairing skills and assessed the effects of presession pairing on child interfering behavior using a concurrent multiple probe design (with replication). We implemented a pairing protocol before early intensive behavioral intervention sessions with four children (3–5 years old) on the autism spectrum. Interventionists mastered pairing skills during training sessions, which were generally maintained when working with child clients. When interventionists implemented presession pairing, child participants demonstrated fewer interfering behaviors. We discuss implications of our preliminary findings and future directions.
Behavioral Interventions, 2024 · doi:10.1002/bin.1983