| There has been limited research conducted to evaluate social skills curriculums used to teach children diagnosed with autism. One of these curriculums includes Carol Gray's work with social stories. The purpose of this study was to compare the use of social stories when combined with the formalized social skills curriculum designed by The Children's Institute in Verona, NJ, a school for children diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders. The social stories and social skill curriculum focused on five targeted social skill domains. A total of six male students between the ages of 8-11 participated in the study. Three of the students received both the social stories as well as the school-based curriculum, while the remaining three students received only the school-based curriculum. As part of an on going data collecting research project, archival data was evaluated to examine the percentage of change between the two groups as well as the teacher's perception of change. In the area of teacher's perception of change, the results indicated that for four of the targeted social skills there were no significant differences between groups. However, the social skill domain of maintaining attention resulted in a significant difference between groups. Mann Whitney U test and the Wilxon signed rank test were used to examine levels of significance. |
