Effectiveness of parent-training program on children with autism spectrum disorder in China

This study intends to explore the effect of parent-training program on the rehabilitation intervention in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Chinese-speaking areas of China by offering parent skill training and psychology counseling.

From January 2018 to June 2019, a total of 80 children diagnosed with ASD from the Department of Children Healthcare of Wuxi Children's Hospital were randomly grouped into the parent training groups and control groups. Parents in the training group received 12 weeks of skill training, including 8 group and 2 individual training sessions, as well as psychology counseling. This enabled them to give their children >2 h of intervention training daily in a natural environment. Children in the control group were placed on a rehabilitation waiting list or received general community training. Before grouping and after the intervention, all children underwent neuropsychological evaluations with Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC), Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), and Gesell Developmental Schedule (GDS). GDS covers five sectors, namely adaptive behavior, gross motor, fine motor, language, and personal-social behavior.

Statistically significant differences were not detected between the two groups in ABC, CARS, and GDS scoring at baseline evaluation. And significant differences were detected between the two groups in ABC, CARS, adaptive behavior, and personal-social behavior scoring at endpoint evaluation. Furthermore, the re-evaluation results of ABC scoring and CARS scoring of the children in the parent training group decreased significantly from the preliminary evaluation results when compared before and after the intervention. Moreover, the intragroup comparison of adaptive behavior scoring, language scoring, and personal-social behavior scoring of the experiment group increased significantly from the preliminary evaluation results, while the difference of the same of the children in the control group between re-evaluation and preliminary evaluation did not differ significantly.

In China, the parent-training program enables parents to train ASD children in a natural environment, which would markedly improve behavioral problems, core symptoms, adaptability, language competence, and social development capability.