Planned Activities Training for mothers of children with developmental disabilities. Community generalization and follow-up.

Planned Activities Training (PAT) teaches mothers to plan and structure activities to prevent challenging child behaviors. PAT was evaluated with four mothers of children with developmental disabilities, including autism, Down Syndrome, and ADHD. PAT was used independent of any other behavior management techniques to examine its impact on mother and child behaviors, which were examined in addition to "fidelity" data on the mothers' implementation of PAT techniques. A multiple probe experimental design across two families with a replication across two more families demonstrated that PAT produced marked improvements in mother and child behavior in three generalization settings. In most cases, mothers' use of PAT procedures more than doubled. Three mothers' appropriate behavior increased from 25% to 40%. Improvements in child behavior ranged from 20% to more than 50%. Intervention gains were maintained at 1, 3, and 6 months. These results suggest that PAT is a useful technique for promoting durable generalization of mother child skills.