Social emotional reciprocity

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of strategic interventions, focusing on social-emotional reciprocity skills, which can be implemented with children with high functioning autism (HFA) and Asperger's syndrome (AS). Authors will first describe some of the social-emotional characteristics of these children and then will outline the potential and concerning mental health and behavioral outcomes that may occur if systematic intervention is not provided. Through a discussion of emerging research in this area, authors will delineate features of effective interventions that address social-emotional reciprocity deficits in children with HFA and AS. An overview of the Strong Kids programs, Strong Kids-E, Strong Kids-M (Merrell et al. in Strong Kids-M: A social and emotional learning curriculum for students in grades, Baltimore, Brookes, pp. 3-5, 2007a and Strong Kids-M: A social and emotional learning curriculum for students in grades, Baltimore, Paul H. Brookes, pp. 3-5, 2007b), Strong Teens (Merrell et al. in Strong Teens: A social and emotional learning curriculum for students in grades, Baltimore, Brookes, pp. 9-12, 2007), Strong Start: Pre-K (Merrell et al. in Strong Start Pre-K: A social and emotional learning curriculum for student in pre-k, Baltimore, Brookes, 2009), and Strong Start: K-2 (Merrell et al. in Strong Start: A social and emotional learning curriculum for students in grades K-2, Baltimore, Brookes, 2007), one particular systematic social-emotional learning program, will be provided along with specific examples of how this curriculum may be used with this particular population. Ideas for using data to monitor the effectiveness of interventions such as Strong Kids will be shared. Finally, authors will conclude with a discussion of the challenges pertaining to this area of research and future directions specifically for social-emotional intervention research with HFA and AS.