Further Investigation of PEERS for Preschoolers: The Role of Emotion Regulation

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience social skill deficits which may lead to negative peer interactions and feelings of loneliness. Autistic children may also experience increased emotion dysregulation compared to non-autistic peers. Social and emotional difficulties impact each other, as social skills have been negatively associated with dysregulation. The Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®) for Preschoolers (P4P) intervention is a newly adapted social skills training program for autistic preschoolers. Although P4P has demonstrated positive outcomes, none of the current studies investigating the P4P intervention were conducted independently from the developing author, Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson. The proposed study seeks to replicate previous findings from investigations of the P4P intervention to establish this intervention as an empirically supported treatment. The proposed study also hopes to extend the literature by studying the impact on child emotion regulation in this intervention, given the established link between emotion regulation and social functioning. Caregivers and their autistic preschoolers (4 to 6 years old; N = 10) will be allocated to either a treatment immediate (TI) or a 10 to 14-week waitlist (WL) period. Participants in the TI group will then complete the P4P intervention, which includes 16 90-minute sessions occurring twice weekly over a period of eight weeks. Relevant outcomes will include child social communication, social skills, emotion regulation, and emotion dysregulation. It is expected that preschoolers will demonstrate increased social communication, social skills, and emotion regulation as well as decreased emotion dysregulation following treatment compared to waitlist controls. Further, it is expected that preschoolers will demonstrate clinically significant improvements in these outcomes following the intervention. Results will contribute to the emerging evidence base on the P4P intervention, thus highlighting an important avenue of care for autistic youth.