The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

The Social Skills Research Clinic at Indiana University provides social skills training for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) through a semi-manualized approach. This approach is based on the Building Social Relationships Model (Bellini, 2006), a five-step, systematic approach to teaching social interaction skills. Individuals identified with an Autism Spectrum Disorder often demonstrate atypical development of social interactions, communication, and show deficits in the ability communicate with other individuals (Kjellmer, Hedvall, Fernell, Gillberg, & Norrelgen, 2012; H.-T. Wang, Sandall, Davis, & Thomas, 2011; Wimpory, Hobson, & Nash, 2007). While a deficit in children’s social skills may negatively impact his or her ability to establish and maintain social interactions with others, many children on the autism spectrum have the desire to interact with peers. However, engaging in interpersonal interactions may be difficult for children on the autism spectrum.

Social skills training programs are implemented to improve social interaction skills and increase a child’s repertoire of social skills for positive interactions. Additionally, social skills training programs are designed not only to teach children positive social skills, but also provide opportunities for them to successfully practice the new skills.

An example of a systematic strategy to teach social skills will be presented in the proposed workshop. The Building Social Relationships Model (Bellini, 2006) is a systematic approach to teaching children and adolescents with autism social interaction skills. The five steps of the model will be presented: assessing social functioning, distinguishing between skill acquisition and performance deficits, selection of intervention strategies, implementation of the intervention, and evaluation and monitoring progress. Furthermore, five tenets provide the basis of the model; these five tenets will be discussed to provide a foundation of the model.

In addition to a brief overview of the BSR model, the workshop will overview the social skills program at the Social Skills Research Clinic (SSRC) at Indiana University. The SSRC is directed by Scott Bellini and follows the Building Social Relationships (BSR) model. The SSRC offers a 9-week group social skills program for children on the autism spectrum. Each session consists of two parts; one of which was developed to teach children social cognitive skills (e.g., divided attention), while the other part of the session consists of strategies to teach specific social skills (e.g., joining-in play activities with peers). Consequently, participants are not only taught necessary skills for social interaction, but given the opportunity to successfully practice the skills with a trained peer mentor and other participants with autism. Throughout the intervention period at the SSRC, data is continuously collected. Pre and post-intervention data regarding the child’s social skills is collected, as well as recess observation data. Furthermore, during each session, data is collected on the outcome variable of social engagement.

The proposed workshop will discuss the specific strategies and procedures currently delivered at the SSRC. The strategies will include evidence based social skill techniques, such as video self -modeling, prompting procedures, peer mediated instruction, as well as newly developed social cognitive techniques.  The session will also provide a description of the data collection procedures used at the SSRC, in addition to a summary of outcome data for children who have participated in the SSRC program. This workshop will also provide an overview of the new manualized version of the Building Social Relationships program (BSR-M).

Learning Objectives: