Purpose Storybook reading provides a naturalistic context to promote bonding and increase oral communication between the reader and child. This study investigated the impact of modified dialogic reading procedures, which included a prompting component on the language skills of children with autism spectrum disorder and Down syndrome in the children's homes. Method A multiple-probe-across-participants design was used to investigate the efficacy of the intervention for this population. Parent training and coaching were provided via telepractice. Maintenance and generalization sessions were also conducted. Results A functional relation was observed between parent implementation and telepractice coaching. Conclusion While the child responses to comprehension questions did not change, changes in the parent implementation of modified dialogic reading procedures in response to coaching via telepractice were noted in this study. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13382831

Telepractice coaching may be a viable alternative technology tool to deliver services to parents of children with autism spectrum disorder. Using a multiple probe design across participants, we examined the effectiveness of telepractice parent coaching in a communication intervention on parents’ implementation of strategies to improve their children’s communication skills. Project coaches instructed parents on strategies to teach communication skills to their child, including incentivizing communication, modeling, prompting, progressive time delay, and expanding. Results indicated a functional relation between the telepractice parent coaching intervention and parent use of strategies. Effect sizes for each participant are compatible with visual analysis results that show a very low effect to very strong effect depending on the intervention component examined.

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Individuals with autism spectrum disorder from bilingual homes have to learn and discriminate which language to use across settings and different people. Language instruction is complicated by the core deficits in social communication, which is common in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Using a single case, multiple probe design across three parent-child dyads between 3 and 6 years from Spanish speaking backgrounds, the present study examined the effect of telepractice-based parent coaching in a multimodal communication intervention. Culturally responsive approaches were integrated within the coaching model, including targeted interview questions. There was also a 15-item rubric used for identifying criteria for culturally responsive research. Findings indicate that the use of multimodal communication intervention via telepractice parent coaching showed promising results. We can conclude that this approach can be a beneficial tool to help family members improve communication for bilingual children with autism spectrum disorder.

This comprehensive review reports on methodological quality of 162 single-case studies on augmentative and alternative communication for communication and challenging behavior in individuals diagnosed with autism or intellectual disabilities and with complex communication needs. Following review for inclusion criteria, documents were excluded if they failed to meet basic methodological standards. Each remaining study was evaluated for 10 detailed quality criteria. No studies met all standards without reservations. Only three of the included studies met all of the standards with reservations and the remainder met some but not all standards, with or without reservations. The included studies reported adequate detail for half of the quality indicators, but insufficient details for participant, setting, maintenance, and generalization, and social validity descriptions. An increased quantity and quality of research were found in over four decades. More recent studies have adequately reported half of the criteria investigated, including describing the materials, defining the outcome variables, describing baseline and intervention procedures, and evaluating procedural integrity. After identifying quality features, the authors report in more detail on low rated quality indicators particularly relevant to studies addressing social-communication interventions. The literature infrequently reported race, ethnicity, or home language. Future research should report characteristics of participants to ensure that research becomes representative of the population.