News and Knowledge

In 2013, OAR’s Board of Directors authorized funding for seven new applied autism research studies in 2014. This additional $210,000 in research grants brought the total funds awarded by OAR to over $3 million since its first grants in January 2003. This review is the sixth in a series of seven that will appear in The OARacle before the next grants are awarded in November.

You don’t have to read far in the research about autism to realize that from day one, “social skill deficits” is a defining characteristic of most individuals on the spectrum. Research also shows that developing (and mastering) social skills are a critical part of successfully navigating school and the adult life that waits beyond.

That is why OAR-funded researchers Justin Leaf, Ph.D., and Mitchell Taubman, Ph.D., both with the Autism Partnership Foundation in Seal Beach, Calif., are studying the impact of a 16-week behaviorally based social skills group for young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

These types of groups provide an opportunity for three or more individuals diagnosed with ASD to come together and learn specific social skills collectively. While previous research demonstrated the potential benefits of social skills groups for individuals with ASD, those studies – Drs. Leaf and Taubman argue – were limited in their design. To overcome the previous limitations, the researchers are planning to:

• Select high-functioning individuals to participate in the study
• Provide a thorough battery of assessments prior to intervention
• Use someone who is “blind” to the study (i.e. not affiliated and does not know the experimental conditions) to conduct the assessments
• Use a pre-test/post-test group design with pure randomization
• Have blind observers measure direct social behavior throughout the study
• Measure generalization outside of the social skills group in natural settings with typically developing children, as well as long-term maintenance of acquired skills

 Sixteen participants ages three to seven will be selected for the social skills group and randomly divided into either a treatment group or a waitlist control group. The researchers decided to focus on higher-functioning children because there is little existing research on the effectiveness of social skill groups for this population. Both boys and girls will be included.

The researchers will evaluate three group methods:

• In what’s called “discrete trial teaching,” the teacher breaks a larger skill into smaller components and teaches these components one step at a time. For example, if you were teaching a child her colors, you would introduce one color, such as blue, and make sure the child knows what “blue” is before moving on to another color. A teaching session consists of dozens to hundreds of individual trials, each with the same format: (a) an instruction or other cue from the teacher, (b) a time-limited opportunity for the student to respond, and (c) the teacher delivering immediate feedback (i.e. praise or correction) based upon the child’s response.

• The “cool-versus-not-cool procedure” is used to teach children to distinguish between appropriate (“cool” or “good idea”) and inappropriate (“not cool” or “not a good idea”) social behaviors. Typically, the teacher models a certain social behavior and has the learner determine not only if the behavior was “cool” or “not cool,” but also why.

• The “teaching interaction procedure” is a multi-step teaching package, which consists of: (1) labeling and identifying the target behavior; (2) providing a meaningful rationale; (3) breaking the skill into smaller steps; (4) the teacher demonstrating the behavior; (5) the child role-playing the behavior; and (6) providing feedback throughout. The procedure is highly interactive and requires the participant to be engaged in the learning process.

Finally, the researchers will implement other behavioral interventions, including reinforcement, prompting, priming, functional assessment, and systematic desensitization (a behavioral technique that gradually exposes a person to an anxiety-producing object, event or place, while being engaged in some type of relaxation at the same time in order to reduce the symptoms of anxiety).

Groups will meet twice per week, for 16 weeks, with each group lasting two hours. The group will consist of the 8 participants plus one or two similar-aged peers without autism. While each session will follow the same general format, teachers will have the flexibility to make changes as needed. Each group will begin with an indoor free play period so the children can interact with each other as they typically would and teachers can assess where participants are starting from with regards to the skills being taught. Next, the teachers will implement one of the instructional procedures described above for the whole group, followed by small-group instruction. The last part of the session will be outdoors, where teachers can work with children on appropriate social skills during play (e.g. a game of tag).

The study will evaluate the effectiveness of the social skills group through formal assessments (e.g., parent questionnaires and standardized assessments) as well as direct observational measures of social skills among participants when compared to the control group, generalization of those skills outside of the group in a natural setting with typically developing children, and long-term maintenance of the skills.

The results of the study may help guide the autism community in what constitutes best practice and evidence-based procedures to improve social behaviors for individuals diagnosed with ASD – particularly among high-functioning children. By evaluating various behaviorally based procedures, researchers can inform professionals and parents which procedures should be implemented and when, whether it is done so in a group instructional format or in a one-to-one setting. This will help service providers and schools improve upon the design of the social skills groups they’re already running or planning on running, meaning better short-term and long-term quality of life outcomes for participants.