Effectiveness of a School-Based Executive Function Intervention for High School Students with ASD

There is a critical need for ASD interventions targeting executive functions (EF) including flexibility, goal setting, planning, organization, big picture thinking, and task completion. EF deficits are profound in ASD and related to poor independent living skills. In collaboration with students with ASD, their parents, and teachers, we created “Flexible Futures” (FF), a school-based EF intervention for high school students with ASD transitioning to college. FF targets complex EF demands of adolescence to increase academic success and functional life skills, laying the groundwork for independence in college, and then adulthood. FF is an upward extension of our evidence-based intervention for children with ASD (“Unstuck and On Target”), and employs techniques specifically designed to optimize learning in adolescents. FF specifically targets the EF skills teens need most: self-advocacy, motivation, time-management, and planning. We propose a randomized comparative effectiveness trial of FF and a comparison “treatment as usual” social skills intervention in Fairfax County Public Schools. Our goal is to provide a research-proven EF intervention for immediate use in public and private school settings to reach the broadest number of teens with ASD, and ultimately to set them on a positive trajectory for independence in adulthood. Data will be used for an NIH or similar application to study the impact of EF intervention in adolescence over time, as well as predictors of response.