Social competence intervention program

Abstract

The Social Competence Intervention Program (SCIP) is an innovative, manualized, group intervention for children on the autism spectrum (Guli et al. in Social Competence Intervention Program, Champaign, Research Press, 2008). It uses fun and cooperative creative drama techniques to address skills that make social interactions difficult for this population. These include the giving and taking of nonverbal cues, perspective taking, and cognitive flexibility. The group format allows social difficulties to be addressed in the moment they occur, and so children in the program begin to experience the feelings of social success. SCIP is founded on several models of social competence and social perception described in following sections.