Pivotal Response Training implemented by parents or caregivers.
Pivotal Response Training (PRT) is an evidence-based intervention for children with autism focusing on changing pivotal responses and behaviors that may have widespread effects on communication and social interaction. One central part of PRT is involvement of parents or caregivers, and the implementation of PRT throughout all interacting with children. There has been published several studies showing training parents an others to implement PRT, in various ways. However there are several factors that may influence the effectiveness of PRT, and now Randolph, Stichter, Schmidt and O´Connor has investigated the influence of educational level of caregivers on fidelity and effectiveness of parent implemented PRT.
in their study they included three caregivers without a college degree. The provided 10 training sessions to the caregivers in how to implement PRT. Based on this research there are found that caregivers without a college degree may effectively and with high fidelity. As this study only includes participants without a college degree, it do not compare any differences to caregivers at other educational levels, thereby limiting the generality of the results. There are also several other factors that may affect the results, many of them mentioned in this article, that should be investigated to better understand how to effectively implement PRT.