Effects of Covert Audio Coaching on Parents’ Interactions with Young Children with Autism

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) frequently present intervention challenges for parents. Covert audio coaching (CAC) has not been studied with parents, nor as an intervention to teach household routines and tasks. Further, evidence of generalization with CAC is limited. We examined the effectiveness of immediate feedback via CAC on mothers’ interactions with their children with ASD. Mothers learned to deliver effective prompts and praise, and generalized these interactions to novel (untrained) routines. Children increased the accuracy of training and generalization tasks after their mothers received the coaching intervention.