The Impact of an Individualized Social Skills Intervention for a High Functioning Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The Social Skills Intervention (developed specifically for this study) is a social skills plus anxiety reduction program that uses direct instruction, anxiety reduction, and reinforcement principles. The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of the social skills training on increasing the frequency of three target behaviors for one 8 year old, female student. A secondary purpose was to decrease student anxiety by teaching how and when to use a specific coping technique. A concurrent multiple baseline across behaviors design was used to evaluate social skills instruction on target behaviors. During baseline, intervention, and maintenance sessions, the participant\u27s responses were videotaped and then subsequently viewed and coded after the session. The percentages of correct responses demonstrated by the participant were measured to evaluate the effectiveness of the social skills training on target behaviors. Results suggest that the social skills intervention plus anxiety reduction increased the student\u27s correct responses for each target behavior. However, no change in the participant\u27s level of anxiety was found