Collaboration in the Digital Age: Virtual Behavioral Skills Training to Teach Effective Instruction Delivery for Children With Autism

ABSTRACT

Youth diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are at a higher risk for experiencing difficulties following instructions, which may lead to coercive interactions with caregivers and an increase in other challenging behaviors. However, parents often face significant barriers (e.g., transportation, long distances from clinics) accessing effective services to address these issues. To overcome these barriers, the current study evaluated the effectiveness of virtually delivered behavioral skills training with three parent‐child dyads for improving parents' use of effective instruction delivery to improve their children's response to instructions. Results indicated that all parent participants demonstrated an increase in accurate use of effective instruction delivery with concomitant improvements in children's response to instructions. These results were found to maintain for up to 5 weeks. Moreover, parents endorsed virtually delivered behavioral skills training and effective instruction delivery as an acceptable training procedure and intervention to improve instruction following, respectively. Results, implications, limitations, and future direction are discussed.