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following the child's lead in play, little child noncompliance and inappropriate behavior are expected to occur in CDI.
In the second situation, the Parent-Directed Interaction (PDI), the parent is instructed to lead the play and attempt to get the child to follow his/her rules. In this situation, the observers assess the parent's ability to direct their child and gain the child's cooperation. Because the PDI situation increases the amount of parental control, it provides observers with an opportunity to evaluate the child's response to directions (e.g., compliance, inappropriate behavior).
In the third situation, Clean-up (CU), the parent is instructed to get the child to pick up the toys without assistance and put them into their respective containers. The Clean-up situation requires the highest level of parental control. Unlike the first two play situations, Clean-up is a task situation in which parents are expected to direct their children using commands and directive information descriptions to inform the child of the task demands. This situation provides opportunities to assess the parent's success in gaining compliance from the child, to assess inappropriate behavior in response to parental demands, and to assess compliance to the commands. The parents' use of praise and positive attention for compliance can also be evaluated.
The total time required for comprehensive baseline and post-treatment observation of a parent-child dyad is approximately 25 minutes. The CDI and PDI situations each last approximately 10 minutes. The first five minutes of each of the two play situations is used as a warm-up and transition period, and the last five minutes in each of the two play situations is coded. Because cleaning up the toys may not require more than a few