CPS Collaborates on Autism Research and Services

In Broward County, last year there were about 100 children under the age of 3 diagnosed with autism. Therefore, there is a critical need to offer parenting support and training to families with autistic children. CPS is involved in a research project recently awarded the NSU Quality of Life Faculty Community-Based Applied Research Grant, a collaborative effort with the Center of Psychological Studies (CPS), the Mailman Segal Institute for Early Childhood Studies (MSI), and the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS); and two community partners, Early Steps and the UM-NSU Center for Autism and Related Disorders (UM-NSU CARD).

The project will compare the effectiveness of two parenting interventions, a didactic and an interactive model, aimed at parents with a child between the ages of 18 and 36 months diagnosed with autism. The results of this project can have an important impact on the services available to families with a child under the age of 3 diagnosed with autism living in Broward County. CPS doctoral students, under the supervision of Dr. Kristen Cunningham and Dr. Nurit Sheinberg, will maintain active involvement in the project by administering assessments and by providing individual sessions to teach parents how to implement the Responsive Teaching (RT) curriculum, a child development curriculum that was designed to be implemented by parents to help maximize the potential of each routine interaction. Dr. Gerald Mahoney, the Verna Houck Motto Professor of Families and Communities at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University and author of RT, will visit NSU in July to provide direct training to CPS doctoral students on the RT curriculum.