Currently the Center on Interventions for Children and Families is conducting two research projects related to the Responsive Teaching Curriculum:

Project Bridge is a three year field initiated research project funded by the US Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. The primary purpose of this study is to compare the effectiveness of the Responsive Teaching early intervention curriculum (Mahoney & MacDonald, 2005) with Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) as a procedure for helping parents address the social emotional and behavioral problems of young children with ASD and other developmental disabilities.

A pre-post-experimental research design is being used to compare the effects of these two treatment programs. A group of 80 children with behavior problems or socio-emotional concerns who are under four years of age and their parents are being randomly assigned to receive treatment with either the Responsive Teaching curriculum or PCIT. Treatment consists of weekly parent-child intervention sessions for a period of 6 to 12 months conducted by trained interventionists from Case Western Reserve University. Children's social emotional and developmental functioning will be assessed at entry, and after 12 and 24 months. At the same time, parents will be asked to complete a series of instruments assessing their psychosocial functioning, including measures of stress, depression, satisfaction with support and family functioning. Beginning at baseline and at six-month intervals thereafter, parents' interactions with their children will be assessed both with the Maternal Behavior Rating Scale and the Child Behavior Rating Scale.

Analyses will be conducted to examine differences between the two treatment groups related to children's social-emotional and developmental functioning. They will also assess the effects that intervention has on parents' interactions with their children and the quality of children's social interactions. Analyses will also examine how intervention outcomes are related to characteristics of parents and families.

Developmental Partners is research and demonstration sponsored by the Office of Special Education of the United States Department of Education.

There is considerable evidence that children who are adopted are at great risk (because of various pre-adoptive experiences) for developmental and social-emotional difficulties that would make them eligible for special education services. Nonetheless, even though a high percentage of foster children currently participate in early intervention, children who are adopted are under-referred.

In this project we are developing and evaluating Prevention, Assessment, Referral and Transition model that can be used by public and private adoption agencies as well as early intervention programs as a means to identify developmental problems, provide time limited intervention services early in the adjustment period of young adoptees, and transition adopted children to formal services.

This project is demonstrating this model with a sample of 80 adopted children and their parents. Adoptive families receive weekly intervention sessions that are based upon Responsive Teaching through random assignment into either a 3 month or 6 month intervention group. We are evaluating the effects of this intervention on children's social-emotional, communication and cognitive functioning. We are also examining the impact of this intervention on families and on the numbers of children referred to early intervention. Results from this project will be disseminated to parents, professionals and other research and training projects.