Emerging Social Skills Interventions for Individuals with Autism

Abstract

In addition to the evidence-based interventions discussed in this book, there are several interventions developed to improve social competence for individuals with autism spectrum disorder that show promise. While the interventions we discuss in this chapter have one or more studies suggesting clinical benefit for individuals with autism spectrum disorder, by definition they are not well established at this time, often because the research base lacks methodological rigor (e.g., large-scale controlled trials) and/or because the extant research is still fairly new and not thoroughly evaluated. Further exploration of these emerging interventions, however, is crucial in order to gather evidence regarding effective interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. In this chapter, we describe some of the emerging interventions targeting social skills for individuals with autism spectrum disorder, review the existing research on the use of the interventions by exploring the mechanism-driven versus distal outcome interventions, generalizability, and replicability of studies, and highlight the clinical implications for these techniques.