Parent-assisted social skills training to improve friendships in teens with autism spectrum disorders. Randomized controlled trial: Multimodal Anxiety and Social Skill Intervention for adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. A social adjustment enhancement intervention for high functioning autism, Asperger's syndrome, and pervasive developmental disorder NOS. Learning through interaction in children with autism: preliminary data from asocial-communication-based intervention. A randomized controlled study of parent-assisted Children's Friendship Training with children having autism spectrum disorders.
This study examines the efficacy of a manualized parent-assisted social skills intervention in comparison with a matched Delayed Treatment Control group to improve friendship quality and social skills among teens 13-17 years of age with autism spectrum disorders. Targeted skills included conversational skills, peer entry and exiting skills, developing friendship networks, good sportsmanship, good host behavior during get-togethers, changing bad reputations, and handling teasing, bullying, and arguments. Results revealed, in comparison with the control group, that the treatment group significantly improved their knowledge of social skills, increased frequency of hosted get-togethers, and improved overall social skills as reported by parents. Possibly due to poor return rate of questionnaires, social skills improvement reported by teachers was not significant. Future research should provide follow-up data to test the durability of treatment. Anxiety is common among adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and may amplify the core social disability, thus necessitating combined treatment approaches. This pilot, randomized controlled trial evaluated the feasibility and preliminary outcomes of the Multimodal Anxiety and Social Skills Intervention (MASSI) program in a sample of 30 adolescents with ASD and anxiety symptoms of moderate or greater severity. The treatment was acceptable to families, subject adherence was high, and therapist fidelity was high. A 16 % improvement in ASD social impairment (within-group effect size = 1.18) was observed on a parent-reported scale. Although anxiety symptoms declined by 26 %, the change was not statistically significant. These findings suggest MASSI is a feasible treatment program and further evaluation is warranted. This paper reports the findings of a 20-week social adjustment enhancement curriculum for boys aged 8-12. The curriculum was designed to address three areas hypothesized to be deficient in persons with HFA, AS, and PDDNOS: emotion recognition and understanding; theory of mind; and executive functions/real life type problem solving. Parents attended a semi-structured concurrent psychoeducational training meeting during children's sessions. Statistically significant improvements in facial expression recognition, and problem solving were reported for intervention group children compared to waiting list control group children. For the intervention group (the only group for whom data were available), older and less cognitively able boy's scores on a depression inventory decreased significantly more than younger children's. Mother's depression scores tended to decrease and there were significant reductions in child problem behaviors reported. Results are discussed in the context of individual differences in participant cognitive levels and profiles, symptom severity, and affect-related variables. The study evaluates a social-communication-based approach to autism intervention aimed at improving the social interaction skills of children with autism spectrum disorder. We report preliminary results from an ongoing randomized controlled trial of 51 children aged 2 years 0 months to 4 years 11 months. Participants were assigned to either a target treatment or community treatment group. Families in the target treatment group were given 2 hours of therapy and coaching each week in an intervention emphasizing social-interaction and the parent-child relationship. Children in the community treatment group received a variety of services averaging 3.9 hours per week. After 12 months, outcomes were measured to determine changes in the groups in social interaction and communication. In addition, a regression analysis was conducted to determine whether changes in social interaction skills were associated with language development. Results suggest that children in the treatment group made significantly greater gains in social interaction skills in comparison to the community treatment group, but no between-group differences were found for standard language assessments. Initiation of joint attention, involvement, and severity of language delay were found to be significantly associated with improvement of language skills in children with autism. Finally caregiver skills targeted by the intervention were found to be significantly associated with changes in children's interaction skills. This study evaluated Children's Friendship Training (CFT), a manualized parent-assisted intervention to improve social skills among second to fifth grade children with autism spectrum disorders. Comparison was made with a delayed treatment control group (DTC). Targeted skills included conversational skills, peer entry skills, developing friendship networks, good sportsmanship, good host behavior during play dates, and handling teasing. At post-testing, the CFT group was superior to the DTC group on parent measures of social skill and play date behavior, and child measures of popularity and loneliness, At 3-month follow-up, parent measures showed significant improvement from baseline. Post-hoc analysis indicated more than 87% of children receiving CFT showed reliable change on at least one measure at post-test and 66.7% after 3 months follow-up.
There is some evidence that social skills groups can improve social competence for some children and adolescents with ASD. More research is needed to draw more robust conclusions, especially with respect to improvements in quality of life.