Young children with autism spectrum disorder, who also have serious behavioural problems, showed improved behaviour when their parents were trained with specific, structured strategies to manage tantrums, aggression, self-injury, and non-compliance, findings from a parent study by Yale and Emory University researchers show.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a chronic condition beginning in early childhood and defined by impaired social communication and repetitive behavior. ASD affects 0.6 to 1% of children worldwide. In young children, ASD is often complicated by moderate or severe behavioural problems.
This 24-week, multi-site, randomised trial was conducted by the Research Units on Behavioural Intervention (RUBI) Autism Network, a six-site National Institute of Mental Health-funded consortium dedicated to developing and testing behavioural treatments for children with ASD.
Denis Sukhodolsky, assistant professor at Yale Child Study Centre, provided oversight for the study at the Yale site. Sukhodolsky and other investigators at Yale played a central role in data management, statistical analysis, and study monitoring.
"Parent training has been well studied in children with disruptive behaviour disorder," said Sukhodolsky. "Our study shows that parent training is also helpful for improving behavioural problems such as irritability and non-compliance in young children with ASD."
RUBI investigators randomly assigned 180 children between the ages of 3 and 7 with ASD and behavioural problems to either a 24-week parent training programme, or a 24-week parent education program. Parent education provided up-to-date and useful information about ASD, but no instruction on how to manage behavioural problems.
"Parent education was an active control condition," said James Dziura, associate professor in the department of emergency medicine at Yale, who, along with Dr Cindy Brandt, led the data management and statistical analysis for the study. "Both groups showed improvement, but parent training was superior on measures of disruptive and non-compliant behaviour."
[link url="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/yu-ptr050115.php"]Yale University material[/link]
[link url="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2275445"]JAMA abstract[/link]