The Effect Of Video Modeling And Social Skill Instructionon On The Social Skills Of Adolescents With High Functioning Autism And

Research conducted on video modeling has shown that these strategies are most effective when they include specific strategies to address conversation skills. Social skills research has also shown that teaching social skills to adolescents in group settings may be more effective than presenting them on an individual basis. Adolescents with Aspergers Syndrome (AS) and High functioning Autism (HFA) participated in a12-week Social Skills Training (SST) program. In addition to pre-and post-study measures, conversation skills data were collected before and after the application of the independent variable (video modeling). Follow-up interviews were also conducted with participants, secondary participants, and parents of the primary participants. After a two-week baseline phase, participants attended weekly social skills training and received the treatment of video modeling with videos found on YouTube. This established pre-existing social and conversation skills and enabled the measurement of changes over the course of the 12 week program. After post intervention data were collected, additional data were collected with participants and secondary participants, neuro-typical peers, as a measure of treatment generalization. This study proposed that presenting social skills videos found on YouTube, would be effective in increasing levels of initiation, responses and conversation skills, thereby increasing communication effectiveness and reducing social rejection by peers. Although some gains in conversational skill levels were observed by most participants in the study significant increases in conversation skill levels were not observed in both ASD only group settings or of the ASD neuro-typical mixed group setting