The Effects of a Multi-Component Social Skills Self-Monitoring Program on Two Females Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often struggle to engage in the skills necessary to engage in a back-and-forth conversation, or reciprocal social conversations (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Koegel, Park, & Koegel, 2014; Landa et al., 1992; Paul et al., 2004). An ABAB withdrawal design was employed to assess the use of a social skills program which consisted of 2 main components: (1) ASD on the Go module training with embedded video modeling, and (2) social skills self-monitoring with goal setting. Two participants were selected, both 13-year-old females with high-functioning ASD. During both treatment phases, participants were taught verbal components of a reciprocal conversation (initial response, elaborated response, and reciprocal question-asking) as well as several important non-verbal components (eye contact, facial expression, and posture). Participants engaged in 10-min conversation sessions in which they self-monitored their use of verbal components and set goals related to increased frequency of verbal conversation components. Results showed an increase in verbal components for both participants. Mean frequency of verbal components per 10-min sessions for Participant 1 increased by 10 (initial responses), 9 (elaborated responses), and 21 (reciprocal question-asking) from baseline to intervention. Mean frequency of verbal components for Participant 2 increased by 13 (initial responses), 12 (elaborated responses), and 17 (reciprocal question-asking). These increases indicate an overall increase in the turn-taking and appropriate reciprocal conversation of each participant