News and Knowledge

In 2014, OAR’s Board of Directors authorized funding for seven new applied autism research studies in 2015. This additional $210,000 in research grants brings the total funds awarded by OAR to over $3.3 million since its first grants in January 2003. This is the second of seven previews that will be featured in The OARacle over the next few months.

It is not news that most individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) do not go to college and many cannot find a job. In some cases, this may have to do with intellectual ability, but more than half of individuals with ASD have an IQ greater than 70 and are capable of pursing post-secondary education, leading independent adult lives, and holding a job. What, then, holds them back? Quite often, the answer is simple even if the solution is not: social skills.

OAR-funded researchers, Nicole Matthews, PhD, and Christopher J. Smith, Ph.D., Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center, hope that their study, Inclusion of Typical Peers in a Social Skills Intervention for Adolescents with ASD: A Longitudinal Study, can help to change that. They are studying the efficacy of a social skills intervention program for adolescents with ASD known as the PEERS (Program for the Education & Enrichment of Relational Skills) program. PEERS teaches and measures nuanced social skills during a 14-week intervention for adolescents with ASD and one parent/caregiver of each adolescent. Research has validated the program’s effectiveness. What Drs. Matthews and Smith want to know is if a version of PEERS that includes typically developing peers will be more effective than the traditional program.

To test that, they plan to compare the results of three program variants: the traditional PEERS program, the PEERS program with typically developing peers, and a delayed treatment control group. They believe that adolescents who complete PEERS with typically developing peers will demonstrate (1) improved social skills and mental health and (2) more reciprocated friendships and integration into social networks than adolescents in the other two groups.

Forty-eight adolescents with ASD will be recruited for the study and divided into three groups. Those in the first group will participate in a traditional PEERS program while participants in the second group will participate in a PEERS program with typically developing peers. Those in the third group will be in a delayed treatment control group. The 14-week PEERS program will be held before the beginning of the school year for two years.

The PEERS with peers program will include pairs of one typically developing volunteer and an adolescent with ASD. Clinicians will facilitate interactions among group participants and ensure equal participation in group discussions. Additionally, homework assignments (e.g., making a phone call to a peer in the PEERS program) will be assigned to the pairs. The researchers believe these strategies will provide the necessary social interaction between participants with and without ASD. Other than those strategies, the program will be the same as the traditional PEERS program.

Eight participants with ASD will participate in the delayed treatment control group in each of the two years, for a total of 16 participants. This group will complete the same measures as the treatment groups but at a slightly later time so that change in the two treatment groups can be compared to a matched group of adolescents who are interested, but have yet to participate, in PEERS.

The researchers will compare:

• Change in social communication skills and well-being between groups and within each group
• Friendship reciprocity and integration into social networks among the three groups at multiple post-intervention time points

They believe that adolescents who complete PEERS with peers will demonstrate larger gains in social functioning and well-being than adolescents who complete the traditional program and the delayed treatment control group. They also predict that gains in real-world settings will be measurable for those in the PEERS with peers group.

The researchers hope that this research study will result in evidence-based information on the value of a program that incorporates typically developing peers. They also believe that the study will address a lack of evidence for the generalization of skills acquired during PEERS, since the study will examine and compare change in the social networks of adolescents with ASD who participate in the traditional PEERS program and the program with typically developing peers.

Ultimately, they note in their proposal, “this project may improve one of the few evidence-based social skills interventions for cognitively able individuals with ASD making the transition to adulthood.”