Teaching Children with Autism Through Sibling Interventionists Coached via Telehealth

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which typically developing (TD) siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) could implement the model-lead-test (MLT) strategy through the self-monitoring checklist and telehealth-based coaching, as well as the impact of the sibling-mediated intervention on the acquisition of various skills in children with ASD. Two sibling dyads participated in this multiple-probe-across-behaviors study. The instructors coached and provided feedback to the TD siblings on using the MLT strategy and the self-monitoring checklist via telehealth. The results demonstrated that the self-monitoring checklist and the telehealth-based coaching effectively improved treatment fidelity as the TD children delivered the target strategy, which, in turn, improved a diverse range of skills in their siblings with ASD. However, difficulties in generalization to new instructional targets for TD participants and maintaining learned targets for participants with ASD were observed.