Using social stories and behavior skills training involving family members to increase social skills for a child with autism

This study compared the effectiveness of a social story intervention with a social story plus behavior skills training intervention involving family members for a child with autism. A multiple baseline across siblings design was used to assess the impact of the intervention on social interaction of the child with autism, as well as the social interaction of the child\u27s siblings. The siblings implemented both phases of the intervention. Social validity measures were taken from the siblings and parents, treatment integrity and generalization were assessed as well. The results indicated that the social interactions of the child with autism and the siblings increased initially, but did not continue to increase when the social story intervention was implemented by the siblings. The addition of BST did not result in any additional improvement. On the other hand, two of the siblings\u27 social interactions increased over time when engaged in the behavior skills training intervention, which resulted in an increase in the social interactions of the child with autism during play with them. The results also indicated that the sibling mediated intervention failed to generalize to a non-trained free play condition in the pool