While the boy in the grocery store may need to learn to request a break, the girl wanting to interact with her peers may need to learn a more appropriate way of initiating
social interactions. Indeed, Bauminger and colleagues35 reported that children and adolescents with high-functioning ASD may be interested in interacting with peers but do not have the knowledge about Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical how to interact appropriately. In their study, children and adolescents with high-functioning ASD initiated and responded to peers about half as often as age- and IQ-matched children and adolescents with typical development. However, this decreased rate of social interactions may not be an indicator of a lack of interest in social Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical interaction, as children and adolescents with ASD reported higher levels of loneliness than their peers with typical development. A variety of skill-based intervention programs have been
developed to teach social skills to children with ASD. While early intervention programs have focused on relationship-based approaches Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical that combine behavioral and developmental techniques,29,30,36 approaches for older children and adolescents have focused on skill building. These skill-building programs have taught social scripts to teach specific nonverbal and verbal behavior for specific situations, social stories to teach social norms and expectations, role plays to provide opportunities for practice, and self-monitoring through videotapes and checklists Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical to increase self-awareness.37,38 Remarkably, few of the skill-building intervention programs have included caregivers
as cotherapists, or even included a caregiver education component. In a review of 66 studies published in peer-reviewed journals between 2001-2008 targeting social skills, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Reichow and Volkmar38 reported that parent training was only measured as a main intervention variable in four studies, all targeted at improving social skills in preschool children. Thus, while best practices consider parent and family involvement as an essential element of intervention programs for children with autism,3 very few studies targeting social skills have included parents beyond the toddler and GSK-3 early childhood years. The inclusion of caregivers is particularly important when social skills difficulties lead to challenging behaviors in the home and community settings. Indeed, Kasari and Lawton39 cautioned that current social skills intervention approaches using behavioral principles seem to train children to produce specific operationalized behaviors rather than facilitating learning and generalization of the behavior across contexts. They caution that many current interventions may teach “form” but not “function.