Current research shows that social skills training is an effective intervention for adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. It involves teaching specific social skills like maintaining eye contact and initiating conversations. Common social deficits seen in autism include difficulties with understanding non-verbal cues like body language and facial expressions, maintaining eye contact, standing too close or far during conversations, and understanding sarcasm and irony. Students may lack skills to repair conversations when they don't understand something. Effective social skills interventions increase social motivation, teach social scripts, use modeling and roleplaying, involve peers to prompt social interactions, and provide opportunities to generalize skills in natural settings.

1. Imagine you have been tasked with creating a presentation to help your colleagues understand
and respond appropriately to the social actions of students with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Create a multimedia presentation using a program in the Technology Resource Library.
Use visuals to support the learning.
Include the following in your presentation:
 Identify current research in the area of social skill development theory.
adolescents with ASD.
Social skills training (SST) is one type of childspecific
intervention (McConnell, 2002). This intervention
involves teaching specific skills (e.g., maintaining
 eye contact, initiating conversation
 Describe common social skill deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Students on the spectrum can exhibit a wide range of social skill deficits. High
functioning students with Autism and students with Asperger’s Syndrome may have
fewer language delays, but often share similar social challenges to others on the
spectrum.
Students may have a tendency to dwell on certain topics and have difficulty
understanding the normal back and forth of conversation. They may have difficulty
understanding body language and reading facial expressions. This is understandable
given that their own body language and facial expressions can be mismatched or
misleading. Even their tone of voice and inflection can be atypical. They may stand too
close or too far from their conversation partner. Eye contact can also be challenging and
some students on the spectrum visually scan their surroundings versus attend to the
person they’re speaking with.
Here are some examples of deficits in specific areas:
Social communication
1. Humor. Students on the spectrum have difficulty understanding sarcasm and irony. Their jokes tend to be
appropriate for children much younger than those their age.
2. Most students have skills to ‘repair’ conversation when they don’t understand something (i.e. they
can look confused or ask, ‘what’, when something is unclear). Students on the spectrum often
lack these ‘repair’ skills.
.
Social initiation- They will miss the point of the short ‘‘How are y ou?’’ exchange,
of ten going on too long. They need to be taught how to use and
o understand this ty pe of conv ersation.

2. The lack of use of v oice tone and body language by students on
the spectrum to conv ey their f eelings means that they cannot
easily communicate stress and anxiety until a situation escalates
o to ameltdown.
Social reciprocity- They hav e dif f iculty maintaining comprehension of a conv ersation.
They should be taught how to f eel comf ortable in asking
questions about parts of a conv ersation they don’t understand.
When comprehension breaks down, they need to be taught
-joint attention- response to joint attention (RJA), involves an individual’s ability to respond to initiations from
others. Philip demonstrated RJA as he responded with a smile and a glance to the giraffe and his mom as
she engaged him with the toy giraffe. The second, initiating joint attention (IJA) interactions, involves
initiating joint attention interactions with a communication partner-If a child does not understand the
social function of communication (i.e., communication to share an interest), his communicative
interactions will continue to focus on personal needs/desires.
o to use ‘‘repair processes’’ to restore comprehension. (See
o Social cognition- idioms and non literal meanings, irony and sarcasm (Come back
later, be more specific)
Social Skills Development in Children with Autism Spectrum
Disorders: A Review of the Intervention Research
Increase social mot ivat ion Foster self-awareness and self-esteem
Develop nurturing, fun environment
Intersperse new skills with previously mastered skills
Start with simple, easily learned skills (errorless teaching)
Increase social init iat ions Make social rules clear and concret e (e.g., st ay one arm’s length from
other person)
Model age-appropriate init iat ion st rategies
Use nat ural reinforcers for social init iat ions (e.g., follow child’s
conversat ion lead/interest )
T each simple social ‘script s’ for common sit uat ions
Improve appropriate social
responding
Teach social response scripts
Reinforce response at tempts
Use modeling and role-play to teach skills
Reduce interfering
behaviors
Make teaching st ructured & predictable
Different ially reinforce posit ive behaviors
Keep behavior charts (e.g., checkmarks or st ars) for posit ive behavior
Review socially appropriate and inappropriate behaviors of the
part icipants as a group, via video or audiotape segments
Promote skill
generalizat ion
Orchest rate peer involvement (e.g., prompt ing & init iat ing social
interact ions, physical proximity)
Use mult iple t rainers & individuals with which to pract ice skills
Involve parents in t raining
Provide opportunit ies to pract ice skills in safe, natural set t ings (e.g.,
field t rips)

3. Use t ime between session to pract ice skills (e.g., via ‘homework’)
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