Training Asian Immigrant Parents to Teach Manding to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder often exhibit difficulties in social communication and interaction. Those who do not acquire functional communication to effectively express wants and needs often are at a higher risk of displaying challenging behaviors. Mand training is recognized as an evidence-based intervention for teaching communication to children with autism spectrum disorder. However, limited research has been conducted to examine the effects of training parents from Asian immigrant backgrounds to teach manding to their children at home. To fill the gap, we trained three Asian parents using behavioral skills training to teach their children with autism spectrum disorder to mand for preferred items. A multiple-baseline across participants design was used to evaluate the effects of parent training on parent participants' implementation of mand training and the effects of the parent-delivered training on mand acquisition of their children. Results showed that all three parents had significant improvement in their mand training implementation, and all three children demonstrated an increase in their use of unprompted mands at different levels. The three parent-child dyads demonstrated various levels of maintenance and generalization of the skills learned. Implications of the findings and recommendations for future research are discussed with specific regard to working with Asian immigrant families.