The multiple effects of a play-oriented parent training program for mothers of developmentally delayed children

A behavior education program for teaching mothers to develop toy play in their developmentally delayed children was evaluated. During training, introduced in a multiple baseline fashion, mothers were sequentially instructed how to use prompts and rewards in teaching their children to play with developmentally appropriate toys. Measurement of training effects were assessed on multiple levels. After training, mothers displayed the target skills taught, and children showed an increase in their rate of appropriate play. A higher order analysis of the data revealed that mothers and infants were generally more responsive to each other's behavior and that the children self-initiated more frequently during interactions with their mothers. The implication of the results for designing early intervention programs and the merits of using complex units of analysis when examining a training program's effectiveness were discussed.