Overcoming Language Barriers between Interventionists and Immigrant Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Overcoming Language Barriers between Interventionists and Immigrant Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Nataly Lim1 · Mark F. O’Reilly1 · Fabiola Vargas Londono1 · Adrienne Russell‑George1 Accepted: 10 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This study used a video prompting intervention to overcome language barriers between English-speaking trainers and Spanish-speaking immigrant parents of children with autism. Parents were taught instructional skills targeting independent dressing. A multiple baseline design across three families and a replication using an alternating treatments design with a fourth family were used to evaluate the effects of the intervention. All mothers reached mastery criterion and generalization of instructional skills was observed for three mothers, with treatment gains maintaining during follow-up. Improvement in independent dressing skills was observed for four children. Findings suggest that video prompting can be used to teach immigrant parents of children with autism who have limited English proficiency when there is a language mismatch between parents and trainers. Keywords Immigrant · Parent training · Autism spectrum disorder · Spanish-speaking · Language barrier · Video prompting
Introduction Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by deficits in social communication as well as restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviors and interests (American Psychiatric Association 2013). ASD appears to affect individuals across racial and ethnic groups (Maenner et al. 2016). Recent research focusing on culturally and linguistically diverse individuals with ASD indicate that (a) individuals with ASD can be bilingual regardless of cognitive impairments (Hambly and Fombonne 2014), (b) bilingualism does not negatively impact language development (Drysdale et al. 2015; Lund et al. 2017; Wang et al. 2018), and (c) incorporating heritage languages into interventions may lead to better treatment outcomes (Lim et al. 2019a, b). In their 2019 review, Lim et al. found that amongst studies that investigated the effects of incorporating the heritage languages of participants with neurodevelopmental disorders into treatment, only two out of 18 studies utilized parents as interventionists. Lim et al. (2019a, b) also noted
* Nataly Lim [email protected] 1
The University of Texas, Austin, USA
that having parents implement interventions may be more socially valid because heritage languages are more likely to be spoken within the home environment. Additionally, given the limited number of bilingual service providers available (Mitchell 2016; Olvera and Olvera 2015), involving parents as therapists may be the most practical solution to providing culturally responsive treatment.
Parent Training Teaching parents to deliver interventions to their children may not only circumvent the shortage in bilingual service providers (Lim et al. 2019a, b), but as noted by the National Academy Press (2001), parent training is
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