A randomized controlled study of parent-assisted Children's Friendship Training with children having autism spectrum disorders. Promoting social skill development in children with pervasive developmental disorders: a feasibility and efficacy study. A social adjustment enhancement intervention for high functioning autism, Asperger's syndrome, and pervasive developmental disorder NOS. RCT of a manualized social treatment for high-functioning autism spectrum disorders. Parent-assisted social skills training to improve friendships in teens with autism spectrum disorders.
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. A randomized controlled design was employed to evaluate a social skills intervention for children with pervasive developmental disorders. Aims included evaluating the acceptability of the program and gathering preliminary evidence on efficacy. Forty-four children, ages 8-11 years, were randomly assigned to treatment or wait list. Treatment consisted of a 16-week group intervention designed to teach appropriate social behavior. Between group comparisons showed that children in treatment were rated as improved on the primary outcome measure, (unblinded parent report), but not on the secondary outcome measure, a parent questionnaire. Parents reported a high level of satisfaction with the intervention. The study supports the feasibility of this intervention to families and highlights challenges for future research in social skills intervention. 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. This RCT examined the efficacy of a manualized social intervention for children with HFASDs. Participants were randomly assigned to treatment or wait-list conditions. Treatment included instruction and therapeutic activities targeting social skills, face-emotion recognition, interest expansion, and interpretation of non-literal language. A response-cost program was applied to reduce problem behaviors and foster skills acquisition. Significant treatment effects were found for five of seven primary outcome measures (parent ratings and direct child measures). Secondary measures based on staff ratings (treatment group only) corroborated gains reported by parents. High levels of parent, child and staff satisfaction were reported, along with high levels of treatment fidelity. Standardized effect size estimates were primarily in the medium and large ranges and favored the treatment group. 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.
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.