Effectiveness of social skills training interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder

- ABC: non-statistically significant improvement (p=0.211).

- IQ: statistically significant improvement (p<0.001).

- Vineland standardized score (communication): statistically significant improvement (p=0.053).

- Vineland standardized score (socialization): non statistically significant improvement (p=0.252).

- SSiSRS instrument: mean scores were lower over time for total problem behaviors, but this did not reach statistical significance.

- SCARED instrument: I) during the treatment phase, there was a statistically significant time effect for separation anxiety in the predicted direction (p=0.015); II) mean values were lower compared to baseline with week 18, but there was no statistically significant time effect for the subscales panic disorder, school avoidance, social anxiety, or generalized anxiety.

- LAPS and CABS: there were no statistically significant changes in either the LAPS or CABS bonding scores over time.

- SRS revealed a significant interaction on the social communication subscale score, but not SRS total scores, suggesting that those in the PEERS condition improved to a greater extent than controls.

- The ADOS subscale scores also had significant interactions in social reciprocity, communication, and restricted/repetitive behaviors, consistently showing that the PEERS group demonstrated greater improvement than controls.

- Aggressive behavior problems: I) the intervention did not significantly affect the aggressive behavior problems scale, as reported by the parent (p=0.036); II) the aggressive behavior problems subscales showed a significant reduction in temper tantrums (p=0.004).

- Anger coping strategies: the intervention had a significant effect on the use of adaptive anger coping strategies as reported by the parents (p=0.001).

- Social cognition: I) the experiment group showed a better performance on the TOM-V (p=0.04); II) TOM-C differences did not reach statistical significance, (p=0.09); and III) significant group differences were present in the ERP markers of incidental face memory between the experiment and the WLC groups at post-treatment, (p=0.01).

- Social behavior: The experiment group engaged in more cooperative play during solicited play (p=0.02).

- Clinical global impressions: improvement scale; there was a significant difference between the IG and the DG on the blind rating of CGI-I (p=0.05).

- Measurement of RRB: target behavior vignette; the immediate impact of the intervention characterized by the difference between the groups at the first outcome assessment visit was -0.45 (95 % CI: [-1.23, 0.33]). Then subsequently, the difference in the average change between visits was -0.13 (95 % CI: [-0.55, 0.29]).

- Participants in the treatment group significantly increased the percentage of questions asked from pre- to post-intervention (p=0.035), whereas the percentage of questions asked by the waitlist group remained relatively unchanged.

- The treatment group demonstrated significant improvements (p=0.009) in the percentage of directed positive facial expressions during social conversations compared to the waitlist group.

- Mutual engagement did not reach statistical significance (p=0.576).

- A significant effect was found for the interaction of time and group for SRS scores (p=0.032).

- There were no significant between-group differences for joint attention with adults, initiation of communication with another child, initiation with an adult, response to communication, or social withdraw/behaviors.

- Usual care ever institutionalized group

- Never institutionalized group

- Caregivers of children with a history of institutionalization reported that these children had significantly more deviant behavior than never institutionalized children on all subdomains of the SCQ (all p<0.001).

- Children in the placed in FCG had significantly lower scores on the SCQ than children in the CAUG (p<0.001).

- Intention-to-treat analysis for the Vineland social emotional early childhood scale indicated a significant effect in favor of FCMT.

- Thematic qualitative analysis of the parent interviews showed that the parent-child relationship grew stronger.

- Change scores for BOSCC total and social communication sub-score showed no significant differences between intervention and control groups (both p>0.28).

- No statistically significant differences in change scores were observed between baseline and outcome or baseline and follow-up for the MCDI, CSBS-DP, and ADOS-2 (all p>0.06).

- Statistically significant group difference observed in most behavioral observation codes (solitary, any peer interaction, positive interaction with peers, positive response to child by peers; p<0.05).

- CBT group doubled their rate of social interactions, reducing solitary behavior by over half from pre- to post-treatment.

- TAU group showed slightly worse scores posttreatment.

CBT outperformed ESCT on the primary outcome measure (p<0.001; 95% CI: [0.06-0.93]) and the secondary outcome measure (p=0.003; 95% CI: [0.45-1.27]).

- The sole significant total effect of ImPACT teaching was a notably large effect on parents’ utilization of ImPACT strategies (p<0.001), favoring the ImPACT group.

- Significant serially mediated effects were found, such as ImPACT’s impact on children’s expressive ability and social communication at Time 4, mediated sequentially by parents’ use of ImPACT strategies at Time 2 and HR-Sibs’ motor imitation at Time 3.

- All other serially mediated effects involving different proximal skills were nonsignificant (confidence intervals around indirect effect coefficients inclusive of zero).

- Positive impacts were observed in students’ receptive language and teacher-rated social skills.

- Treatment effects moderated by the severity of ASD.

- Minimal and statistically insignificant group distinctions were noted in terms of enhancements in response to joint attention skills during and after the intervention.

- The sample displayed significant individual variability in their response to the system.

- BLH and children from MLH, both language groups exhibited significant language growth, and the home language environment did not have a moderating effect.

- The BLH group showed an increase in gesture use during the intervention compared to the MLH group.

- Initial data suggest no evidence of negative effects from a bilingual home environment on language or social development in young children with ASD.