A Peer-Facilitated, Multicomponent Social Skills Intervention for Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum

Adolescents with autism (even those considered “high-functioning”) exhibit diverse profiles with varying degrees of impairment to their social motivation, interpersonal understanding, and concrete skill use. These vulnerabilities, left unchecked, can greatly limit their long-term quality of life. The complexity of their social needs requires comprehensive social programming. The proposed randomized wait list-controlled trial will examine the use of a peer-facilitated, multi-component social skills intervention to simultaneously target motivational, conceptual, and skill deficits. This novel group-based intervention includes the use of high-school social facilitators, individualized skill targets, self-management, experiential and didactic components, parent education, and social homework. Social competence improvements will be serially assessed every five weeks using a variety of measures, including naturalistic conversation samples, survey measures, and data on real-world social encounters. Current pilot data suggests that the proposed group intervention will be highly effective in rapidly improving the social skillset of participating adolescents. Such social improvements have obvious practical implications for this population as they start to pursue adult social endeavors, such as developing meaningful friendships, obtaining and keeping suitable employment, and seeking out romantic relationships.