Brief Report: Telehealth Music-Enhanced Reciprocal Imitation Training in Autism: A Single-Subject Feasibility Study of a Virtual Parent Coaching Intervention.

The study included only four autistic children and their mothers, so the results cannot show how most families would respond. There was no comparison group receiving standard telehealth RIT without music, so it cannot tell whether music added benefit or simply helped parents learn RIT. There was also no in-person comparison group, so telehealth delivery cannot be directly compared with usual care. The main coder for parent fidelity and child imitation was not masked, although a second masked coder checked a subset with high agreement. Only six treatment probes occurred after parents had learned all RIT components, which may be too little time for child imitation changes to appear. The study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and families may have faced quarantines, service instability, routine changes, and stress that could affect outcomes. Child outcomes were preliminary and inconsistent, so this is not evidence that tele-meRIT improves autistic children's imitation.

Do not conclude that telehealth music-enhanced RIT improves autistic children's spontaneous imitation. The main positive result was that parents learned and maintained the coaching strategies; children's imitation did not increase consistently, and the study had no comparison group to show what music added.