A novel method for measuring learning opportunities provided by parents to young children with autism spectrum disorder.
Katherine S Davlantis, Annette Estes, Geraldine Dawson and 1 others
PMID 30623667WHAT IT FOUND
A new video coding method counts how often parents turn play into teaching moments.
Higher counts correlated with better child language and cognition scores 12 weeks later, but not with autism symptom severity. The study shows the method works; it does not prove that more teaching moments cause progress.
Key findings
01Parents provided an average of 13.5 successful learning opportunities per three minutes of coded free play.
02The quantity of parent-provided learning opportunities was significantly associated with children's verbal and nonverbal cognitive scores and vocabulary comprehension and production, but not with autism symptoms.
03The coding system showed moderate split-half reliability and adequate concurrent validity with an existing treatment fidelity measure.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study is observational, so it cannot prove that more parent-provided learning opportunities cause better child outcomes; children with stronger skills may simply elicit more teaching moments. The coding system is new and requires further replication to confirm its utility. Interactions were observed in a laboratory setting, so it is unclear if they represent typical home interactions. The sample size was limited by the larger parent-training trial. The quality of other community interventions the children received was unknown.
Declared interests
The paper does not report a specific conflict of interest statement in the provided text, but notes funding from the National Institutes of Health (N.I.H., Extramural).
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the significant correlations as evidence that coaching parents to increase learning opportunities will improve child language and cognition. The study design cannot determine direction: children with better skills may be easier to interact with, leading parents to provide more learning opportunities.