Social Skills Training for Autism Spectrum Disorder: a Meta-analysis of In-person and Technological Interventions

EGranieri et al. (2020) pooled 18 separate trials of social-skills training for children and teens with autism.

They compared two ways to teach the skills: sitting with a live therapist and using a screen, robot, or app.

The team then asked which format gave bigger social gains.

Both in-person groups and tech tools produced medium-to-large improvements.

Surprise: the screen or robot worked just as well as the human coach.

No single trial in the pool stood out as better than the others.

The finding backs up two early RCTs. Hopkins et al. (2011) showed avatar faces teach emotion reading, and Marino et al. (2020) proved a small robot boosts perspective-taking in 4- to 8-year-olds.

Takata et al. (2023) push the idea further. They used five child-size robots at once and still saw quick social gains, showing the tech option keeps working even when you scale up the hardware.

McAuliffe et al. (2017) looks like a mismatch at first. Their face-to-face PEERS program helped high-schoolers while the meta-analysis says tech is fine. The gap is age: PEERS targets teens, and most tech studies in the meta focused on younger kids. Both can be right if you pick the tool that fits the learner.

You can stop worrying that a tablet or robot is second-best. Add an app module, schedule tele-SST, or let a robot run practice rounds while you collect data. Mix formats to save staff hours and keep kids engaged without losing skill gains.