Teaching eye contact to children with autism through parent training via telehealth : Using shaping without prompting in social play

Sammanfattning: Deficits in eye contact are a common feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous research has shown shaping without prompting to be effective in teaching eye contact to children diagnosed with ASD. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate a shaping procedure, implemented by parents trained and supervised via telehealth, to teach two preschool-aged children with ASD to make eye contact in social play. A single-case, multiple baseline experimental design was used to evaluate the effects of the teaching protocol., Interobserver agreement and treatment integrity were measured. For each child, eye contact was taught in three different settings in their natural environment, each setting corresponding to a child-preferred play activity where the parent was a necessary component. The parents were instructed to engage in thea play activity, make a pause and wait for the child's eye contact before continuing the activity. The target behaviour, eye contact, was divided into five successive learning phases. Within the framework of the study, both children acquired sustained eye contact for a duration of between 1 and 2 seconds across several settings. Furthermore, in line with prevailing research, findings from this study confirm that telehealth can be used to train and supervise parents from a distance. A high degree of social validity, as measured by the participating parents' self-reports, as well as indices of happiness in the two children, adds to the results of this study. Challenges, solutions and benefits of telehealth are highlighted. Variability in outcome between settings and children are discussed as well as limitations and directions for future research.