Social Skills Training for Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Social skill deficits are a pervasive and enduring feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). As such, social skills training (SST) should be a critical component of programming for youth with ASD. A number of SST strategies exist, including those employing social stories, video modeling interventions, social problem solving, pivotal response training, scripting procedures, computer-based interventions, priming procedures, prompting procedures, and self-monitoring. This article summarizes each intervention strategy and provides results from several research studies. Social skills assessment is a crucial first step to SST, and a number of assessment measures are described. Meta-analytic reviews of the research provide further recommendations for successful SST programs.

Section snippets

An overview of social skills training

SST refers to instruction designed to improve or facilitate the acquisition or performance of social skills. Social skills are “socially acceptable learned behaviors that enable a person to interact with others in ways that elicit positive responses and assist in avoiding negative responses” [11]. Social skills are distinguished from social competence, in that social skills represent social behaviors, and social competence represents judgments or perceptions of those behaviors by others [12].

Specific social skills training strategies

McConnell [14] provides a taxonomy of social skill interventions that forms a helpful guide for synthesizing strategies. According to McConnell, social skill interventions can be divided into five categories: (1) environmental modifications, (2) child-specific interventions, (3) collateral skills interventions, (4) peer-mediated interventions, and (5) comprehensive interventions. Environmental modifications involve modifications to the physical and social environment that promote social

Assessment of social functioning

Evaluation of social skills and social competence is a critical element of SST [52]. The purpose of the social skills assessment is to identify skill deficits that will be the direct target of the intervention, and to monitor the outcomes of the SST program. Gresham [12] divides social skills assessment methods into three categories that measure different levels of social functioning.

Type I measures include rating scales and interviews designed to measure social competence or perceptions of

Available assessment tools

Social skills assessment often involves a combination of observations (both naturalistic and structured), interviews (eg, parents, teachers, child), and social skill rating forms (parent, teacher, and self reports). The following section focuses on the use of rating scales as these are most commonly used by researchers and clinicians to measure social competence in youth with ASD. A major advantage of rating scales is their ability to quickly and efficiently obtain large quantities of

Meta-analytic reviews of social skills training

Gresham and colleagues [12] concluded that meta-analytic reviews of SST have yielded a wide variety of results, ranging from ineffectual to highly effective interventions. Based on their review of the literature, the investigators provided a number of recommendations for promoting effective social skill interventions. First, the researchers recommended that SST should be implemented more frequently and more intensely than what is typically implemented. They concluded that 30 hours of

Summary

Social skill deficits are a pervasive and enduring feature of ASD. As such, SST should be a critical component of programming for youth with ASD. An essential first step of SST is to identify the skills that will be targeted during intervention. This is done through social skills assessment. The use of reliable and valid rating forms helps the clinician identify skills to target, and provides a measure of treatment progress. A number of SST strategies are available to clinicians with varying

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