Professional Parent Training Project

This project was part of a graduate practicum placement through the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, USA. The practicum placement used Brooke Ingersoll and Anna Dvortcsak’s (2010), Teaching Social Communication to Children with Autism, to teach parents of a young child with autism. Techniques written in the manual are evidence-based and are meant to enhance interaction, imitation, language, and play skills. Two graduate students and a PhD supervisor, worked with two parents over a 10-week period to target goals for their child and work through the teaching techniques that were discussed in the manual. Data was collected weekly on the child’s goals, along with fidelity measures of both the student trainers and the parents. This manual is similar to pivotal response training therapy and will be compared and contrasted within the lecture. A breakdown of techniques, benefits, and challenges of this project will be discussed during the lecture.