The Use of Technology and Telehealth to Improve Behavioral Sleep Assessment and Intervention
A cheap camera and nightly Zoom coaching can move autistic children out of the parental bed and into age-typical sleep.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Koudys et al. (2025) tested a hybrid telehealth sleep package. Caregivers set up a small camera that tracks motion and sound in the child’s bedroom. A BCBA watched the feed and coached parents each night through a phone app.
Three autistic children who still slept in their parents’ bed joined the study. The team used a multiple-baseline design to start the coaching at different times.
What they found
Two of the three children stopped co-sleeping and hit age-typical bedtimes and sleep length. Parents said they liked the results and the remote help.
How this fits with other research
Lichtblau et al. (2018) tried a similar remote setup years earlier. One child with sleep-related hair-pulling used a DropCam and nightly Zoom calls. The camera-plus-coach idea worked then, and Koudys shows it can now serve more families at once.
Tilford et al. (2015) ran in-person sleep plans for autistic children and saw the same child gains plus big caregiver quality-of-life boosts. Koudys keeps those child gains while adding the plus of staying home—no clinic trips needed.
Capelli et al. (2025) found circadian misalignment in autistic clients of every age. Their data say “sleep is broken here,” while Koudys gives a practical, low-burden way to fix it without lab visits.
Why it matters
You can copy this kit next week. Send the family a $40 Wi-Fi camera, schedule 15-minute evening Zoom check-ins, and teach parents to move bedtime later by 15-minute steps while praising the child for staying in bed. Remote coaching keeps your travel bill at zero and still gets kids sleeping alone.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Ship a motion-sensing camera to the family, set a 15-minute earlier bedtime goal, and open a nightly 15-minute Zoom to cue and praise staying in bed.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are likely to experience sleep disturbance. Evidence supports the effectiveness of functional analysis and behavioral sleep interventions to address sleep problems. However, these approaches are resource intensive in terms of assessment and measurement of target sleep behaviors, intervention implementation, and progress monitoring. Recent advances in the use of technology and telehealth in behavioral services may improve the efficiency and effectiveness of behavioral intervention. We evaluated the effectiveness of a hybrid (face-to-face and telehealth) model of behavioral sleep assessment and intervention as implemented by community-based behavior analysts. We used motion/sound detection cameras and various “apps,” for remote viewing, caregiver coaching, data collection, and treatment decision making. We explored the agreement between various data sources. Three autistic children, who engaged in caregiver reported unwanted co-sleeping or behavioral sleep challenges, participated in the study along with their caregivers. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across participants was used to evaluate the effects of the intervention on sleep onset delay, sleep interfering behavior, and total sleep duration. For two participants, caregiver co-sleeping was eliminated, target bedtimes were achieved, and child participants regularly achieved an age-appropriate amount of sleep. Caregivers rated the intervention and child outcomes positively. The results provide preliminary evidence for the use of telehealth technology to provide caregiver coaching, monitor child progress, and make timely data-based treatment decisions. Results of this study may be used to increase the efficiency of––and access to––behavioral sleep assessment and intervention.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2025 · doi:10.1007/s40617-024-00942-0