| Summary: | Naturalistic behavioral interventions increase the acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of child social communication skills among children with developmental delays (DD). Teaching Assistants (TAs) are ideal interventionists for delivering social communication interventions because of the significant amount of time they spend working directly with children with DD in the preschool classroom. However, professional development for TAs is often inadequate and there has been a limited amount of research in this area. In addition, TAs are often working with more than one child at a time with varying skill levels, but no research has been conducted on the use of strategies with more than one child at a time. The current single-case research study addresses gaps in the literature by answering the following questions: (1) Is there a functional relation between coaching TAs to use EMT and increases in TA’s fidelity of implementation of EMT with a child dyad?; (2) Is there a functional relation between TA’s use of EMT and increases in child social communication skills?; and (3) Are TAs able to generalize the use of EMT across students with varying social communication skills and goals? Results suggest coaching TAs contributes to increases in fidelity of implementation of EMT strategies and subsequent increases in child social communication skills. TAs were able to generalize the use of EMT across students.
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