Interventions for Increasing Social Skills and Social Competence
As you learned in Chapter 1, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2016a) requires that students with disabilities be educated in the LRE and with general education peers to the greatest extent possible. Fortunately, general education settings and activities are valuable venues for interventions to improve social behavior in students with autism. Without opportunities to interact with typically developing peers, it would be difficult to teach socially valid social skills and achieve generalization of those skills to natural contexts. In the remainder of this chapter, we describe evidence-based interventions for improving social behavior in students with autism. We first discuss overarching considerations for improving social behaviors. Next, we describe specific strategies in two categories: teacher-mediated interventions and peer-mediated interventions. Finally, we discuss how to facilitate generalization of newly learned skills.