VCU RRTC

Parents are their child’s earliest and best teachers.  Teaching parents specific intervention strategies to support their child’s development and manage their child’s behavior has a number of benefits for the child and family.  This presentation will describe the benefits of teaching parents to provide intervention themselves and will discuss important strategies for working with parents, with a focus on parent coaching.

Bio: Dr. Ingersoll is an associate professor of clinical psychology and the director of the MSU Autism Research Lab.  She received her PhD in experimental psychology at University of California, San Diego and completed a clinical post-doc in child psychology at Oregon Health & Science University.  She is a licensed psychologist and board certified behavior analyst.  Dr. Ingersoll’s research focuses on the development, evaluation, and dissemination of social communication interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).  She also conducts research on the impact of ASD on the family and the broader autism phenotype.  A major emphasis of her current work is on the development of community-focused, parent-mediated interventions for young children with ASD.   Dr. Ingersoll has published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on ASD, and is the co-author of Teaching Social Communication to Children with Autism, an internationally-recognized parent training curriculum for children with ASD.   Dr. Ingersoll has presented her work to parents, teachers, clinicians, and researchers both nationally and internationally, and has served as a principal investigator on a number of federal, foundation, and university grants.