Pivotal response group treatment program for parents of children with autism.
Six parent-group classes lift child language without home visits.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Boettcher and colleagues ran six to eight weekly group classes for parents of children with autism.
Each class lasted two hours. Parents watched short videos, role-played PRT steps, and got handouts.
No one went into family homes. All teaching happened in the clinic group room.
What they found
After the last class every parent hit 80 % fidelity on a PRT checklist.
Their kids doubled the number of useful words they said at home.
Gains showed up without any one-to-one therapist coaching.
How this fits with other research
Verschuur et al. (2019) later compared the same group format against individual parent coaching. Both styles raised child initiations, but only the group classes also lowered parent stress.
Tsiouri et al. (2012) used home-based DTT instead of group PRT and still saw first words pop out. The common thread is parents doing the work, not the setting.
Burgio et al. (1986) proved written parent instructions alone can generalize skills at low cost. Boettcher adds language to that list and shows a cheap group model works for autism too.
Why it matters
You can run a short parent group, skip home visits, and still grow child language. Use the saved hours to serve more families on your wait list.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders is increasing, necessitating the development of efficient treatment models. Research has demonstrated that parent-delivered behavioral interventions are a viable treatment model; however, little research has focused on teaching parents in groups. The aim of this study was to demonstrate that parents can learn Pivotal Response Training (PRT) in group therapy, resulting in correlated gains in children's language. Baseline and post-treatment data were obtained and examined for changes in (a) parent fidelity of PRT implementation, and (b) child functional verbal utterances. Significant differences were observed for both variables. These findings suggest that parents can learn PRT in a group format, resulting in correlated child language gains, thus future controlled studies are warranted.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2011 · doi:10.1007/s10803-010-1027-6