| Description |
The current study assessed the Superhero Social Skills program as an evidencebased practice for teaching social skills to elementary children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in a clinical out-patient setting. The program consists of many research validated components, including peer mediation, video-modeling, and social stories. There were 4 participants with ASD and 4 "peer buddies," all between the ages of 5 and 10. Intervention sessions took place at an outpatient clinical setting over 8 weeks. One lesson was taught per week and incorporated components from the program's typical two lesson per week format. After each session, analog free play observations were conducted and coded by the researcher and another graduate student to achieve interrater reliability. Parents reported the number of spontaneous uses of skills at home to measure generalization. Effect size and percentage of nonoverlapping data points were calculated to determine changes in social engagement and generalization. There were also pre- and postmeasures of social behaviors completed by parents and consumer satisfaction measures completed after the intervention by parents and children. The results of this study indicate increased levels of social initiations, social responses, and social engagement during free play observations. For most participants, there was also an increase in generalized use of the skills. Parents and children reported high levels of satisfaction with the program. Overall, results suggest that the "superhero social skills" program is effective for children with ASD. |
