Using the Teaching Interactions Procedure to Teach Social Skills to Children With Autism and Intellectual Disability.

Four children with autism and intellectual disability needed help with social skills. The team used a short teaching-interaction script: describe the skill, show it, practice together, give feedback, and praise. They ran the script in quiet corners of the kids’ day program.

Each child worked on three different social targets, like asking to play or saying hello. The researchers tracked every skill with a multiple-baseline design across behaviors.

Every child hit 80–a large share correct responses after only 3–5 teaching sessions. The skills stayed strong four weeks later and showed up with new adults and peers.

Parents and teachers reported the kids used the skills at home and on the playground without extra prompts.

Ding et al. (2017) ran a near-copy of the package in a public school and got the same strong gains, but they added a quick relaxation cue before practice. The match shows the core BST steps drive the change, not the extra cue.

Sasson et al. (2022) pushed the idea further by moving the training to recess and adding peer buddies plus short selfie-model videos. Their students with autism and ID also jumped in social play, proving the teaching-interaction approach works outside a quiet corner.

Charlop et al. (1992) did something similar 24 years earlier with scripted pretend play. The old study and the new one both used multiple-baseline designs and got big social gains, but Aubrey swapped long scripts for a faster five-step script that fits busy classrooms.

Two big systematic reviews, Menezes et al. (2021) and Dudley et al. (2019), each pool over a dozen school studies. Both conclude that peer-inclusive BST packages like this one reliably lift social skills for students with autism.

You can teach greetings, sharing, or turn-taking in under five minutes with this mini-script. No fancy materials, no long stories—just describe, model, practice, feedback, praise. Try it during natural breaks: arrival, snack, or center rotations. Track one skill at a time and you should see the same quick jump, steady maintenance, and carry-over to new people that these four kids showed.