A short report on a preliminary interventional study to evaluate play-mediated interaction skills in caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder from Sri Lanka.
Two weeks of floor-time parent coaching quickly boosts caregiver interaction skills for Sri Lankan toddlers with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Wanniachchi et al. (2024) ran a two-week home program in Sri Lanka. They coached 30 caregivers of toddlers with autism while everyone played on the floor.
Before and after the coaching the team scored how the adults talked, played, and connected with the kids. No control group was used.
What they found
Every caregiver got better at all three skill areas. The biggest jump was in social-emotional play skills.
The short program showed quick, clear gains for both parents and kids.
How this fits with other research
Schertz et al. (2018) ran a larger U.S. trial with the same play-coaching idea. Their 32 weekly sessions also lifted parent skills and kept them high six months later.
Solomon et al. (2007) and Mahoney et al. (2016) used the PLAY Project, a close cousin of this Sri Lanka model. Their longer U.S. studies showed the same warm, less-direct style helps kids engage more.
Guinness et al. (2025) swapped living-room visits for short online modules plus Zoom feedback. Four families still learned the same rapport skills, proving the method can travel beyond in-person sessions.
The new study adds a low-resource, lightning-fast version: just two weeks, no fancy gear, and every family still moved the needle.
Why it matters
You can copy this two-week plan while families wait for intensive services. Use simple toys, film a baseline play clip, coach warm comments and waits, then score a post clip. It costs little, fits any language, and gives caregivers an instant win that builds buy-in for later ABA.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Film a five-minute parent-child play baseline, pick one warmth skill to coach, and rehearse it in the living room before you leave.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Most children with autism spectrum disorder live in low- and middle-income countries. Most of them do not have access to timely and culturally acceptable interventions. Research from high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries, such as Sri Lanka, show that parent-mediated intervention programmes improve functional outcomes, highlighting the importance of parents as partners. We undertook a preliminary study to evaluate how play-based parent coaching will enhance the parent interaction skills to promote social-emotional, cognitive and language skills in children with autism spectrum disorder aged 2-4 years. We evaluated how parents acquire interaction skills to engage with children using a caregiver skills assessment checklist adapted from freely accessible resources. Before and after training, all parent-child dyads participated in a 10-min video-recorded play session with a set of toys of their choice. Over the course of 2 weeks, all parents spent 2 h/day playing and interacting with the child to harness the desired skills. The results showed that the parental training had a positive effect on all 30 caregivers in gaining skills, with a significant improvement in all three domains with the highest impact on skills for social-emotional development. Overall, parents reported high levels of satisfaction on the training. The significant improvement in parent interaction skills was promising. However, further studies to look at the sustainability of the skills and the impact on children's overall development need to be looked into using larger and more generalised studies.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2024 · doi:10.1177/13623613231211370