A Pyramidal Training Model to Teach Rapport Building Skills to Placement Students

ABSTRACT Few would argue that building rapport with young autistic children in the context of therapy has inherent value. In fact, establishing rapport has been linked to improved learning outcomes within intensive behavioral intervention settings. College placement students and junior technicians may have limited direct training on rapport building, in part because there has been limited research on systematically training rapport building to date. Fortunately, existing literature provides substantial evidence supporting the effectiveness of behavioral skills training (BST) in addressing this need. The current study's objectives were three‐fold. First, to examine the efficacy of using BST to train Therapist Participants employed by a community‐based autism and mental health agency rapport building skills. Second, to investigate the efficacy of using BST to train employed Therapist Participants on using BST to teach Trainee Participants rapport building skills. Third, to monitor and report any collateral effects of rapport building skills training on select client participant (i.e., autistic children receiving services participating in the study) behaviors. Our results suggest rapport building skills improved after training across all adult participants, indicating Therapist Participants were able to effectively teach rapport building to Trainee Participants. Child Participant behavior patterns largely remained unchanged across the study. Given the study was conducted in collaboration with a community agency who invested significant in‐kind support, we discuss study strengths and limitations—as well as next steps for future research.