Gerald Mahoney

A Randomized Control Study of Responsive Teaching With Young Turkish Children and Their Mothers

A randomized control study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of responsive teaching (RT) with a sample of 19 Turkish preschool-age children with disabilities and their mothers over a 6-months period. RT is an early intervention curriculum that attempts to promote children’s development by encouraging parents to engage in highly responsive interactions with them. Participants were randomly assigned to treatment conditions: The control group consisted of standard preschool classroom services and the RT group received biweekly RT parent–child sessions in addition to standard services. Compared with the control group, RT mothers made significantly greater increases in Responsiveness and Affect, whereas their children made greater changes in their engagement or pivotal behavior. There were also significant group differences in children’s developmental outcomes. Children in the RT group improved their developmental quotient scores by an average of 42% compared with 7% for children in the control group.

Chapter Three - The Parenting Model of Developmental Intervention

Abstract The parenting model of developmental intervention asserts that parents have a substantial influence on the developmental outcomes attained by children with disabilities during the early childhood period, and continue to do so even when their children participate in early intervention. The parenting model also asserts that one approach to promoting childrens development in early intervention is to encourage parents to enhance or accentuate those elements of parenting that, research indicates, are associated with child development. This chapter reviews research related to the parenting model that has been reported over the past 20 years. This includes research related to the parenting qualities that are associated with variability in childrens development, a discussion of how these parenting qualities affect the outcomes children attain in early childhood intervention, as well as evidence related to parenting model interventions that have attempted to enhance childrens development and social emotional functioning. This chapter also discusses the compatibilities and inconsistencies of this research with the educational model that currently dominates early intervention practice.

Mechanism of Developmental Change in the PLAY Project Home Consultation Program: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial

This investigation is a secondary analysis of data from a randomized control trial of the PLAY Home Consultation Intervention Program which was conducted with 112 preschool children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and their parents (Solomon et al. in J Dev Behav Pediatr 35:475–485, 2014). Subjects were randomly assigned to either a community standard (CS) treatment group or to the PLAY Project plus CS Treatment (PLAY). PLAY subjects received monthly parent–child intervention sessions for 1xa0year during which parents learned how to use the rationale and interactive strategies of the Developmental, Individual-differences, Relationship-based (DIR) intervention model (Greenspan and Weider in The child with special needs: encouraging intellectual and emotional growth. DeCapo Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998) to engage in more responsive, affective and less directive interactions with their children. This investigation examined whether PLAY intervention effects on parents’ style of interacting with their children as well as on children’s social engagement mediated the effects of PLAY on children’s autism severity as measured by ADOS calibrated severity scores. Regression procedures were used to test for mediation. There were two main findings. First the effects of PLAY on children’s social engagement were mediated by the increases in parental responsiveness and affect that were promoted by PLAY. Second, the effects of PLAY on the severity children’s Social Affect disorders were mediated by changes in parental responsiveness and affect; however, the effects of Responsive/Affect were mediated by the impact these variables had on children’s social engagement. Results are discussed in terms of contemporary models of developmental change including the developmental change model that is the foundation for DIR.

Mediational Analyses of the Effects of Responsive Teaching on the Developmental Functioning of Preschool Children with Disabilities.

Mediational analyses were conducted with data from two small randomized control trials of the Responsive Teaching (RT) parent-mediated developmental intervention which used nearly identical intervention and control procedures. The purpose of these analyses was to determine whether or how the changes in maternal responsiveness and children’s engagement that occurred during these interventions contributed to child development outcomes. To conduct these analyses, regression procedures described by Baron and Kenny were used to test for mediation. RT, which focuses on enhancing mother’s responsiveness with their children, was found to be more effective than the control condition at promoting not only children’s development but also both mothers’ responsiveness and children’s engagement (i.e., pivotal behavior). Intervention changes in mothers’ responsiveness were highly associated with changes in children’s pivotal behavior. However, intervention changes in children’s language and personal social development were mediated by changes in children’s pivotal behavior but not by changes in mothers’ responsiveness. Results are discussed in terms of both mechanisms for developmental change and the nature of children’s early intervention objectives.

An Exploratory Investigation of the Role of Parenting Stress in Relationship Focused Intervention

BACKGROUNDnMothers of young children with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) and other disabilities (DD) have been reported to experience high levels of stress. This investigation examined the effects of parental stress on mothers participation in a Relationship Focused intervention (RFI).nnnMETHODSnMothers and young children who had either PDD (n = 18) or DD (n = 26) received weekly RF intervention for one year.nnnRESULTSnPre-post comparisons indicated significant increases in mothers responsiveness and childrens development and social emotional functioning. Intervention effects were greater for mothers of children with PDD than for mothers of children with DD. There were three findings related to the role parenting stress. First, high levels of parenting stress did not interfere with mothers ability to learn RFI strategies; second, there were non-significant decreases in parenting stress during intervention; third, parenting stress enhanced the effects of mothers responsiveness on children.nnnCONCLUSIONnHigh levels of parenting stress does not appear to interfere with parent participation in RFI.

The Effectiveness of the Responsive Teaching Parent-Mediated Developmental Intervention Programme in Turkey: A Pilot Study.

The case study was conducted to examine the feasibility of an early intervention curriculum called Responsive Teaching with two five-year-old children from Turkey who had significant developmental delays. This study determined whether Turkish mothers might be successful in learning to become more responsive to their children, and whether this would result in significant improvements in their children’s development. Both dyads received 28 individual parent–child intervention sessions which were conducted over a four-month period of time. Pre-, mid-, and post-assessments indicated improvements in the mothers’ responsiveness to their children and the children’s levels of engagement with their parents. There were also improvements in the children’s language and personal social development. Mothers reported that Responsive Teaching helped them learn to interact more effectively with their children and that this resulted in longer and more enjoyable interactions with them. Results from this investigation are discussed in terms of their implications for providing developmental services to preschool-aged children with disabilities in Turkey.

Feasibility of Responsive Teaching With Mothers and Young Children With Autism in Saudi Arabia

A randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess the feasibility of Responsive Teaching (RT) with a sample of 28 Saudi Arabian preschool-aged children with diagnoses of autism and their mothers over a 4-month period of time. RT is an early intervention curriculum that attempts to promote children’s development by encouraging parents to engage in highly responsive interactions. Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment conditions: the Control group received standard community services; the RT group received weekly RT parent–child sessions in addition to standard services. Consistent with the focus of the intervention, RT mothers made significantly greater increases in Responsiveness and Affect than Control group mothers. There were also significant group differences in pre- and posttreatment measures of children’s language and social and fine motor developmental scores. On average, the developmental improvements observed for RT children were 44% greater for social development, 37% greater for language development, and 24% greater for fine motor development than the improvements observed for Control group children. Implications of these findings for providing early intervention services for young children with autism and are discussed.

Pivotal behavior as the mediator of the relationship between parental responsiveness and children's symbolic behavior

Previous research with parents and children with developmental disabilities indicated that the relationship between mothers responsive style of interaction and childrens rate of development was mediated by the simultaneous relationship between mothers responsiveness and childrens social engagement, or pivotal behavior. In this study, we attempted to determine whether childrens pivotal behavior might also mediate the relationship between responsiveness and child development in a sample of 165 typically developing toddlers and their Taiwanese parents. Child development was assessed with a parent report measure of childrens symbolic behavior. Parental responsiveness and childrens pivotal behavior were assessed from observations of parent-child play. Results indicated that parental responsiveness was correlated with childrens pivotal behavior, and that both of these variables were correlated with childrens symbolic behavior. Structural equation models indicated that the relationship between responsiveness and childrens symbolic behavior was fully mediated by childrens pivotal behavior.