Evaluating function-based Social Stories™ with children with autism.

Two boys with autism kept hitting and yelling to get toys or help. The team wrote short Social Stories that matched why each boy acted out. They paired the stories with FCT so the boys learned to ask instead of scream.

An alternating-treatments design flipped days with function-matched stories, non-matched stories, and no story. Staff tracked problem behavior and new mands across sessions.

Problem behavior dropped fast when the story matched the function. Both boys started to mand for items and help. The gains stayed even after the stories were removed.

Non-matched stories helped a little, but not as much. Function-matched story plus FCT won every time.

This result looks like Grindle et al. (2012) who also matched the story to the function, but they used video instead of text and only looked at on-task behavior.

Leaf et al. (2012) and Kassardjian et al. (2014) found Social Stories alone lose to teaching interaction. The key difference is Perez et al. (2015) added FCT. The story set the stage; FCT did the teaching.

Karkhaneh et al. (2010) warned that most Social Story studies are weak. By adding a function-based layer and FCT, Perez et al. (2015) answered that call for stronger designs.

You can keep using Social Stories, but only if you write them around the function and add FCT. Spend your minutes on teaching a replacement mand, not just reading a nice story. Start with a quick functional assessment, then build one short story and one mand teaching plan. You should see problem behavior fall and real communication grow within a week.