Generalization and maintenance of caregivers' effective instruction delivery following group behavioral skills training

Abstract

Behavioral skills training (BST) is an effective modality to train parents in a variety of behavioral techniques for their children. However, extended wait times for behavioral health services can result in increased severity of children's problem behaviors. Furthermore, there is limited research demonstrating that behavior management techniques trained via BST generalizes beyond the setting in which they were trained. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of group‐based BST to improve three caregivers' use of effective instruction delivery (EID) for three children diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders and determine the extent to which effective instructions maintained and generalized to the home. Results indicated that all three caregivers' improved their EDI which resulted in children's improved response to instructions that maintained over time. Furthermore, caregivers' use of EID generalized to the home and maintained over time. Findings, implications, and areas for future research are discussed.

Evaluation of emailed prompts to promote generalization and maintenance of preschool teachers' effective instruction delivery

“…The third research question asked whether target children's response to instructions increased as a function of teachers' improved EID delivery and whether response to instructions maintained. Results indicated that all three target children's response to instructions increased and maintained over time, which is commensurate with previous EID research (LaBrot et al., 2021, 2022b; O’Handley et al., 2021). However, this study's results extend the emailed prompt literature by collecting child outcome data, thereby demonstrating that emailed prompts are beneficial for both teachers and the children they serve.…”

“…The primary dependent variable was the percentage of EID components implemented accurately. Seven EID components were coded per instruction: (1) teacher was in close proximity to child (i.e., within five feet); (2) eye contact was instructed (e.g., “look at me”); (3) teacher provided verbal praise contingent on eye contact; (4) teacher delivered the instruction using a directive (i.e., directive was not coded if started with “lets” or was phrased as a question); (5) the directive was descriptive (i.e., the use of an adjective to describe objects to be manipulated or adverb for the action) (e.g., “Put the brown block in the blue bin” vs. “Put that away”); (6) teacher waited between 5 and 10 s for child to initiate instruction; and (7) the teacher provided verbal behavior‐specific praise contingent on compliance (LaBrot, Kupzyk, et al., 2022). EID components were listed on a data sheet, and their presence or absence was recorded for each individual instruction provided by the teacher.…”

“…Children's response to teachers' instructions served as the secondary dependent variable and included: (1) child provided eye contact (i.e., child's eyes were oriented to the teacher's face); (2) child initiated the instruction within 5 s; and (3) the child completed the instruction correctly (LaBrot, Kupzyk, et al., 2022). Children's response to instruction components were listed on a data sheet and their presence or absence was recorded.…”

“…If both observers scored a component the same (i.e., both recorded “absent” or “present”), an agreement was coded. For each instruction probe and child's response to instruction, IOA was calculated by dividing the total number of agreements by the total number of agreements plus disagreements and multiplying by 100 (LaBrot et al., 2021, 2022b).…”

“…Given this rationale for EIDs' benefits for young children, it is also important to consider children's response to EID. Specifically, these data would include a child (1) providing eye contact/orienting toward adults, (2) initiating an instruction, and (3) completing the instruction (i.e., compliance) (LaBrot, Kupzyk, et al., 2022).…”