Improving social skills in adolescents and adults with autism and severe to profound intellectual disability: a review of the literature.

The authors read every paper they could find on social-skills training for teens and adults who have both autism and severe to profound intellectual disability.

They did not run a new experiment. They simply summarized what the field has published up to 2013.

Almost no studies exist for this exact group. The few that do are tiny, lack control groups, and rarely check if skills last after the program ends.

The team concludes we are flying blind: we have no strong recipe to teach social skills to these clients once they leave elementary school.

Walsh et al. (2018) later showed large gains are possible. They used the ACCESS curriculum plus video modeling with adults who have autism plus ID. Their strong single-case design is exactly the type of evidence the 2013 review says is missing.

Gilmore et al. (2022) meta-analysis looks optimistic at first glance: group social-skills interventions help autistic teens. But most of their studies excluded participants with severe ID. The positive average effect, therefore, does not apply to the clients M et al. worry about—an apparent contradiction that vanishes once you check the inclusion criteria.

UMoya et al. (2022) systematic review covers the wider intellectual-disability field. They also find only small, fragile benefits, backing the 2013 claim that our methods are still weak.

If you serve teens or adults with autism plus severe ID, do not wait for a perfect manual. Borrow elements that work in younger or higher-functioning groups—video models, peer mediators, and scripted role-play—then embed endless generalization probes. Track data weekly and share your graphs; our field needs every single case to build the evidence base this review says we lack.