Parent-Assisted Modification of Pivotal Social Skills for a Child Diagnosed with PDD

Abstract

The social skills training literature for children diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) has recently emphasized the parent's role in generalizing treatment gains, and several studies have promoted the utilization of parents as the primary treatment providers for their children. In this study, two parents were instructed in implementing a token reinforcement and shaping program designed to improve the social behavior of their 8-year-old boy diagnosed with PDD. Interestingly, although the child's parents directly targeted only eye gaze for change, question response latency also improved during treatment. This is one of just a few studies to demonstrate positive response generalization by targeting one "pivotal" behavior. Although as a clinical replication the study lacks many of the experimental controls characteristic of more formal research designs, the study demonstrates that procedures developed in laboratory settings can be meaningfully replicated in "real world" settings.