Being a teenager is not easy, but teenagers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face particularly daunting challenges when it comes to social and communications skills.
Elizabeth Laugeson, Psy.D., a licensed clinical psychologist and an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and Fred Frankel, Ph.D., a professor in the same department, hoped to reduce those challenges with an evidence-based parent-assisted manualized social skills treatment known as PEERS. And, indeed, it did improve social skills in multiple clinical trials.
Developed for use with high-functioning adolescents with ASD, PEERS (which stands for Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills) focuses on making and keeping friends and managing peer conflict and rejection. It relies on the assistance of parents and caregivers to act as coaches to help generalize newly learned social skills to other settings.
The program’s effectiveness is one reason OAR approved funding in 2011 for a subsequent study, Effectiveness of a Virtual Coach Application in Social Skills Training for Teens with ASD, by Dr. Laugeson and Alexander Gantman, Psy.D., then a staff psychologist at the Semel Institute, to test the use of the FriendMaker, PEERS’ virtual coach mobile application, through a randomized controlled trial. The researchers hoped that using an app would provide teens with an independent means of generalizing newly learned social skills without the need for a parent or coach to be with them in social settings.
Thirty-seven adolescents with ASD ranging in age from 11 to 18 and their caregivers were recruited for the study. They were divided into three groups: one group participated in the 14-week PEERS training without the use of the mobile app; another, the control group, participated in PEERS with the mobile app; and the third participated in PEERS with the mobile app 14 weeks after the other two groups to detect changes from pre- to post-test.
Participants attended weekly 90-minute sessions with their caregivers that incorporated social skills lessons, modeling, and role-playing. They were also assigned homework to help master and generalize the newly learned skills in natural social environments like their homes and schools. Caregivers also attended sessions to learn how to coach their children in
the social skills being taught each week.
The FriendMaker app provided a menu of lesson plans based on the PEERS program. Each lesson menu included the newly learned skills and descriptors of how and when the skills should be used during social engagements. For example, if the participant were organizing a get-together, the app would review the steps to take: decide who will attend, when the get-together will happen, where it will happen, and what they will do. The app also included a video role-play demonstration of the skills.
The researchers’ findings suggested that virtual coaching, as an addition to social skills classes and caregiver coaching, does help improve skills for adolescents with ASD. In particular, it leads to greater generalization in educational settings than the traditional parent-mediated model often used in PEERS and other similar social skills groups.
The app is available for iOS device in the iTunes store for $0.99. It provides the full PEERS curriculum in outline form with 25 embedded video role-play demonstrations.
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