Teaching social skills to people with autism

Social skills are a significant challenge for people with autism and typically become an important focus of their behavior therapy. The authors examine the most current and effective methods of teaching social skills to children and adults with ASD. They present various evidence-based approaches and include case studies to illustrate how each strategy is used in practice. The topics covered include how to train parents on increasing a child's engagement and play; how to distinguish social skills from communication/language skills; how to combine approaches in small group settings with typically developing peers; how to target core deficits of autism with Pivotal Response Treatment; how to use conversational scripts, video modeling, and peer-mediated interventions; how to employ naturalistic teaching strategies; how to promote and develop specific social skills; and how to collect and analyze data and chart progress.