PLANNED ACTIVITIES TRAINING FOR MOTHERS OF CHILDREN WITH DEVELOPMENTAL-DISABILITIES - COMMUNITY GENERALIZATION AND FOLLOW-UP

Planned Activities Training (PAT) teaches mothers to plan and structur e activities to prevent challenging child behaviors. PAT was evaluated with four mothers of children with developmental disabilities, includ ing autism, Down Syndrome, and ADI-ID. PAT was used independent of any other behavior management techniques to examine its impact on mother and child behaviors, which were examined in addition to ''fidelity'' d ata on the mothers' implementation of PAT techniques. A multiple probe experimental design across two families with a replication across two more families demonstrated that PAT produced marked improvements in m other and child behavior in three generalization settings. in most cas es, mothers' use of PAT procedures more than doubled. Three mothers' a ppropriate behavior increased from 25% to 40%. Improvements in child b ehavior ranged from 20% to more than 50%. Intervention gains were main tained at 1, 3, and 6 months. These results suggest that PAT is a usef ul technique for promoting durable generalization of mother-child skil ls.