A newly revised training manual may be helpful to teach college students and parents to use applied behavior analysis (ABA) to help children with autism.

ABA is seen by many to be the treatment of choice for children with autism. There is a large need for research-based, low-cost, rapid training to train tutors and parents to conduct discrete trial training with children with autism. This study was designed to see if a revised version of the training book used to teach students to do this type of ABA therapy was useful. The authors found that the revised manual was good at training college students to use discrete trial training to teach three tasks to children with autism. The authors note that the college students did not really work with children with autism, but instead worked with people who acted like children with autism.