Intercontinental Telehealth to Train Japanese Interventionists in Incidental Teaching for Children with Autism

Abstract

Intercontinental telehealth may be a solution for the dissemination of evidence-based practices in underserved countries. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of intercontinental telehealth to train interventionists in incidental teaching. The training package consisted of written and verbal instructions and videoconferencing with delayed video-feedback. Five adults and two children participated in this study. One adult was in the United States (host site), and the remaining participants were in Japan. The adult located at the host site first taught one of the participants (termed “coach”) the incidental teaching and coaching procedures. The coach then trained the three subsequent interventionists in the incidental teaching procedures. All three interventionists improved their implementation of incidental teaching and reached the preset criterion. We also evaluated the distal outcomes on child mands with one child emitting increased mands in response to interventionists’ improved implementation fidelity of incidental teaching and one child demonstrating no change.