A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Social Skills Training for Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Group-based social-skills training creates large parent-reported social gains for adults with autism, but firmer trials are still needed.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Sasson et al. (2022) hunted for every paper that tested group social-skills training for adults with autism. They found 18 studies with the adults.
They pooled the results to see how big the gains were on parent reports, self-reports, and direct tests.
What they found
Parents saw large improvements in social responsiveness after group SST. The effect size was 0.91 — a big leap.
Self-report and direct-test scores also rose, but the evidence quality was only moderate and almost no studies used an active control.
How this fits with other research
Pickard et al. (2019) looked at group sports for autistic kids and found small social gains but zero boost in communication. The adult SST review shows larger parent-reported gains, suggesting social-skills lessons may outdo pure activity groups.
Schertz et al. (2016) showed early language interventions work best when both clinician and parent deliver them. The adult SST studies rarely include parent coaching, so adding that ingredient might lift outcomes even more.
Hong et al. (2017) found tablet-based video modeling yields moderate-to-large effects for all ages. Combining tablet priming with face-to-face adult groups could be a next step.
Why it matters
If you run social-skills groups for adults with autism, keep going — parents notice real-world gains. Push for better studies with active controls and track self-report and direct measures too. For now, blend in parent or peer modules and brief tech warm-ups to squeeze more mileage from each session.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This systematic review and meta-analysis is the first to evaluate the effects of group-based social skills training (SST) on parent-report social responsiveness in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A total of 18 studies were included in the narrative review and among them five randomized-controlled trials (n = 145) were included in the meta-analysis. SST had large positive effects on social responsiveness. The narrative review identified that SST could improve patient's outcomes in adults with ASD. These results should be interpreted with caution due to the moderate quality of the existing evidence, which could have inflated effect sizes. The absence of active comparator control groups makes unclear whether improvements at post-treatment are treatment-specific or are attributable to common factors to all psychotherapies.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2022 · doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2010.10060855