Parent education project II. Increasing stimulating interactions of developmentally handicapped mothers.
Brief BST brings developmentally handicapped mothers up to typical interaction levels and keeps them there.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with mothers who have intellectual disabilities. Each mom had a toddler at home.
The trainers used a simple package: they talked about good play, showed it, let moms practice, gave praise, and had moms tally their own tries. No control group was used.
What they found
After training, the moms used far more stimulating behaviors—talking, showing toys, smiling—during play. The gains moved to the home and lasted five to ten months. At the same time, the children made more sounds and words.
How this fits with other research
Rider (1980) tried a similar BST package with adults who have ID, but skills did not carry into real life. The new study adds home practice and self-recording, and generalization happened.
Burgess et al. (1986) ran an almost identical package the same year, but with first-time fathers. Both projects got large, lasting gains, showing the method works across caregivers.
Laughlin et al. (2019) used the same steps to train special-ed teachers thirty years later. The pattern of big, quick gains repeats, proving the core model still holds.
Why it matters
You can lift a parent’s interaction level to that of typical peers in just a few short meetings. Use brief BST: show, practice, praise, and have the parent count their own tries. The payoff is lasting play talk and more child vocalizations.
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Add a simple parent tally sheet to your BST session so the mom can record each time she labels or expands on her child’s play.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Two studies are reported on the assessment and training of parent-child interactional skills in developmentally handicapped mothers. Study 1 compared the interactions of eight developmentally handicapped versus eight nonhandicapped mothers during play with their young (6-25 months) children. Results showed that the former group generally interacted much less with their children and that they were less likely to praise appropriate child behavior and imitate child vocalizations. Study 2 attempted to remediate these deficits, using a training package consisting of discussion, modeling, feedback, social reinforcement, and self-recording. Results showed, first, that the training did increase the targeted skills to well within the range found for the nonhandicapped mothers. Second, training effects generalized from the group instructional setting to the mothers' own homes. Third, newly acquired skills were generally maintained at or above levels found for the nonhandicapped mothers over a 5- to 10-month follow-up period. Finally, all seven children showed increases in vocalizations concomitant with parent training. The results suggest that developmentally handicapped mothers can be taught to provide more effective and stimulating interactions to their young children.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1986 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1986.19-23