News and Knowledge

Many adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) do not easily learn how to use social strategies to interact with their peers and make friends. This can cause them to miss out on friendships and peer relationships during their middle and high school years. Even worse, some may be ostracized and/or bullied. The effects may be long lasting as well, leaving them unprepared for the social interactions that are crucial to adult life and personal and career success.

A number of researchers are studying how to remedy this critical need. Two of them are OAR-funded researchers, Robert Koegel, Ph.D., and Ty Vernon, Ph.D., based at the University of California Santa Barbara’s Koegel Autism Center. They led “A Peer-Facilitated, Multi-Component Social Skills Intervention for Adolescents with ASD,” a 2015 study of a 20-week social skills program for adolescents with ASD that they developed and evaluated.

The Program

Their goal for the Social Tools And Rules for Teens (START) program was to provide adolescents with interactive instruction in key social skills and opportunities to gain social experience in a safe, accepting peer environment. Thirty-six adolescents ages 12 to 17 with a diagnosis of ASD and one parent per adolescent participated in the program.

Half of the participants participated in the program immediately while the other half were placed on a waitlist. This allowed the researchers an opportunity to evaluate the group that completed the program to the group that had not. Once that evaluation was done, the second half of the group participated in the program to ensure that everyone benefited from the curriculum.

Each week, the adolescents participated in a two-hour session that included:

• A check-in with a college-aged social facilitator
• Socialization time with the facilitators and volunteer peers to allow time for interaction in a natural social environment
• Individual tracking by participants, peers, and facilitators of targeted skills used during socialization time
• A group social activity that was similar to party games or team-building activities
• Discussion of a social skill topic that included modeling and role-playing by the facilitators and practice by the participants
• Individual checkouts with each participant and parent

Evaluation

A number of techniques were used to measure social improvement. These measures were administered prior to starting the START program and after every five weeks. They included parent ratings of their child’s social skills and difficulties, adolescent ratings of their own social skills and difficulties, and the use of video-recorded conversations completed before, during, and after the program. The video-recordings allowed the researchers to carefully observe and track changes in participants’ use of effective social skills. They also showed the videos to outside observers to see if they observed differences in the social skills of the adolescents.

Results

Adolescents in the immediate treatment group experienced significant increases in parent- and self-reported ratings of social competence and a significant decrease in ratings of social impairment. Follow-up surveys administered 20 weeks after the group was over indicated that their social skills continue to improve with time even though they were no longer participating in weekly sessions. Researchers also observed an increase in the use of key social skills by the majority of participants in the video-recorded conversations. The outside observers rated 97 percent of the participants in the initial group as having better social skills than those in the waitlist group.

The most relevant finding for parents is the fact that significant social improvements are possible at this late stage in development. Even adolescents who initially engaged in inappropriate behavior or used provocative or negative statements were able to feel accepted and eventually built their repertoire of social skills.

For teachers, it is important to note that there are simple yet effective strategies for promoting effective social communication strategies in schools and at home.

The most relevant finding for adolescents with autism is that intervention programs should provide safe social environments to allow for interpersonal experimentation. When given the opportunity to serially engage in naturalistic interactions with others while self-managing core skills and receiving ongoing feedback, they can make significant gains in social comfort and competence.

Because of the program’s success with this age group, Drs. Koegel and Vernon are currently evaluating the program’s effectiveness with young adults ages 18 to 25 in a two-year OAR-funded research project that began in 2016.