Social Skills Training in Schools for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Evaluating Effectiveness of Naturalistic Teaching Procedures in an Analog Setting

Social interaction skills are a core area of deficit for individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and often limit the opportunities these individuals have to develop meaningful friendships. School is an ideal setting to address these challenges, as there are many peers are available to practice social interaction skills. However, without support, students with an ASD often do not interact with their peers. Therefore, social skills support in schools is important to address the social development of children with ASD. At this time, though, there is a limited amount of support for interventions to address the social challenges of children with ASD in school settings. Currently, it is recommended that social skills interventions be provided in natural settings at school rather than analog settings. However, it is uncertain if natural environment interventions are considered more effective because of the setting they are provided in or the intervention procedures used in these settings. The current study evaluated a social skills intervention using evidence-based naturalistic teaching procedures provided in an analog setting (i.e., special education classroom). Five students with ASD in kindergarten through 2nd grade were identified to participate in this research study. The intervention was implemented daily by special education staff members (two special education teachers and two special education assistants) who received training and ongoing consultation. Additionally, fidelity of implementation of the intervention was measured throughout the study and the social validity of the intervention was measured prior to and following the implementation of the intervention. Results of this study indicate that the intervention was implemented with high fidelity for all five participants (range: 97-100%) and participants showed significant increases in the percent of time they were engaged in social play and/or conversation with peers following the introduction of the intervention (p = .0026). Findings based on visual analysis provide support that naturalistic interventions conducted in an analog setting can produce significant increases in the social behaviors of students; however, these changes did not generalize to natural settings. Social validity data from this study indicates that educators and students who participated in the intervention found the intervention goals to be socially important, the intervention procedures to be feasible and acceptable, and the intervention to be effective.