BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION FOR SIBLINGS OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM - A FOCUS ON SKILLS TO ENHANCE PLAY

This study assessed the effectiveness of a treatment program to teach siblings to use three sets of behavioral skills while playing with their brother or sister with autism. It was predicted that siblings could acquire behavioral skills, that these skills would maintain over time, and that the skills would generalize to untrained contexts. Three sibling pairs participated in a multiple-baseline design across three sets of skills. Siblings were trained to elicit play and play-related speech to praise play behaviors, and to prompt the child with autism when he or she failed to respond. Clear differences supporting the hypotheses were noted between baseline and posttraining sessions across all targeted behaviors for all three dyads. Generalization and follow-up probes indicated that the siblings were able to generalize the skills to a novel toy, and maintain the skills at 3-week, 6-week, and 16-week follow-ups. Ratings by naive undergraduates of baseline and post-training segments documented the social validity of the behavior changes and showed positive changes in the siblings' playtime experiences. These findings support the hypothesis that siblings can learn behavioral skills for use during cooperative play with their brother or sister with autism.