The Facilitation of Social-Emotional Understanding & Social Interaction in High Functioning Children with Autism: Intervention outcomes

Bauminger, N., (2002), Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol 32, Pages 283-297.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a 7-month cognitive behavioural intervention for the facilitation of the social-emotional understanding and social interaction of 15 high-functioning children (8 to 17 years old) with autism. Intervention focused on teaching interpersonal problem solving, affective knowledge, and social interaction. Preintervention and postinvervention measures included observations of social interaction, measures of problem solving and of emotion understanding. and teacher-rated social skills. Results demonstrated progress in three areas of intervention. Children were more likely to initiate positive social interaction with peers after treatment; in particular, they improved eye contact and their ability to share experiences with peers and to show interest in peers. In problem solving after treatment, children provided more relevant solutions and fewer non-social solutions to different social situations. In emotional knowledge, after treatment, children provided more examples of complex emotions, supplied more specific rather than general examples, and included an audience more often in the different emotions. Children also obtained higher teacher-rated social skills scores in assertion and cooperation after treatment. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of effectiveness of the current model for high-functioning children with autism.

Discussion
The intervention adapted a multidimensional concept of social competence that emphasises the child’s social cognitive capabilities (e.g. problem solving and emotional understanding) as well as ability to learn and practice specific social behaviours such as sharing or cooperating. In addition, the intervention followed an ecological concept in which the child’s close social agents (e.g., parents, teachers, and peers) play an active role in the intervention, working together on the enhancement of the child’s social competence.

Altogether, children demonstrated improvement in all three areas of intervention: Social cognition/social problem solving, emotion understanding, and social interaction. In terms of their social cognitive abilities, although these children could not provide more solutions to social problems after treatment, they underwent a qualitative change in the nature of their solutions. Irrelevant, non-social solutions became fewer, and a tendency to produce more relevant social solutions was noticed. Moreover, children improved their emotional knowledge. A qualitative change was evident in their examples of emotions; after treatment, these children demonstrated improvement in their ability to provide more specific examples of complex emotions, with greater attention paid to the role of the audience in exemplifying emotions.