Establishment of Social Skills Training Group in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Effectiveness Analysis

Summary

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction, and the presence of restricted, repetitive behavior and interests. Their social relationships with peers may remain a challenge or even worsen for individuals with ASD throughout the school years and beyond. Adolescence may be a particularly difficult developmental period, as they may have greater motivation or desire to engage with peers but also have greater awareness of their social disability. Adolescents with ASD are reported to experience greater loneliness and mood disturbances, and have poorer friendship quality and social network status than their typically developing peers. Moreover, a growing body of literature indicating that students with ASD have increased risk at all kinds of bullying involvement. These findings underscore the importance of providing social skills training. One of the empirically supported intervention program that targets adolescents with ASD is the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®). This is a parent-assisted, manualized social skills training program that addresses crucial areas of social functioning for adolescents. Psycho-education and cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques are employed to help adolescents develop ecologically valid skills for making and maintaining friendships. Moreover, caregiver attendance at the same time in the caregiver group was a mandatory component to enhance the child/s generalization of social skills.

Adolescents with ASD and normal IQ will be recruit to attend the 14-week PEERS® group training together with a parent. The participants will be stratified by gender and randomized to a treatment (TX) group or delayed treatment control (DTC) group. A team member uninvolved in the program made the random allocation with random digit generated by computer.

This study investigated the acceptability, feasibility and effectiveness of the Taiwanese adolescent PEERS® program.

Conditions

• Autism Spectrum Disorder High-Functioning

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

PEERS® Social Skills Training

The PEERS® consisted of 14 weekly 90-min didactic sessions. Adolescents and their parents attended separate concurrent sessions. Each session began with a review of the homework assignment from the previous week and allowed time for troubleshooting problems encountered in completing the behavioral assignment. This was followed by a didactic lesson on the weekly topic. Didactic lessons included content related to various social skills and peer interactions. Parents attendance was a mandatory component of PEERS® intervention. Parents were expected to enhance generalization of social skills through in vivo social coaching in natural social settings and increase homework compliance as well as practice of newly learned social skills. A 10-min reunification between adolescents and caregivers was arranged at the end of each session to review the skills taught in the session and assign corresponding homework for the next session.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Taiwan University Hospital

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Mei-Ni Hsiao, MA · National Taiwan University Hospital

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

SINGLE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

12 Years

Max Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-08-02

Primary Completion

2021-08-17

Completion

2023-10-26

Countries

• Taiwan

Study Locations