Social skills group training in high-functioning autism: A qualitative responder study.
Autistic youth in KONTAKT groups felt more social even when their test scores stayed flat.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Choque Olsson et al. (2016) asked autistic youth and their parents what changed after KONTAKT social-skills groups.
They split the teens into high and low responders based on test scores, then ran focus groups.
All kids were verbal, aged 8-18, and had finished the 12-week manual.
What they found
Both high and low responders said they felt more social and more confident.
Parents agreed and added that their children tried new things on their own.
Even teens who scored low on paper still told stories of real-life wins.
How this fits with other research
Wang et al. (2013) pooled 115 single-case studies and found big math gains for social-skills training. Nora’s work adds voices to those numbers.
Sung et al. (2019) moved the same idea to young adults and job skills. They kept the group format and saw the same boost in confidence.
Chan et al. (2021) found small gains from sports programs. KONTAKT shows talk-based groups can feel bigger to the kids inside them.
Why it matters
If a teen says “I talked to someone new,” that counts. Use short check-ins after group to catch these wins. Keep kids in the group even if their data sheet looks flat. Their own words may show the real progress.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Systematic reviews show some evidence for the efficacy of group-based social skills group training in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, but more rigorous research is needed to endorse generalizability. In addition, little is known about the perspectives of autistic individuals participating in social skills group training. Using a qualitative approach, the objective of this study was to examine experiences and opinions about social skills group training of children and adolescents with higher functioning autism spectrum disorder and their parents following participation in a manualized social skills group training ("KONTAKT"). Within an ongoing randomized controlled clinical trial (NCT01854346) and based on outcome data from the Social Responsiveness Scale, six high responders and five low-to-non-responders to social skills group training and one parent of each child (N = 22) were deep interviewed. Interestingly, both high responders and low-to-non-responders (and their parents) reported improvements in social communication and related skills (e.g. awareness of own difficulties, self-confidence, independence in everyday life) and overall treatment satisfaction, although more positive intervention experiences were expressed by responders. These findings highlight the added value of collecting verbal data in addition to quantitative data in a comprehensive evaluation of social skills group training.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2016 · doi:10.1177/1362361315621885