Friday, May 21, 2010
Franklin Hall B Level 4 (Philadelphia Marriott Downtown)
1:00 PM
T. D. Perry
,
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
B. M. Rupp
,
Department of Psychiatry/ Neurodevelopmental Research Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
L. M. Turner Brown
,
Department of Psychiatry/ Neurodevelopmental Research Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
D. L. Penn
,
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Background:
Interest in the development of interventions addressing the unique needs of adolescents with high-functioning autism (HFA) has grown steadily in recent years. Despite this interest, however, the treatment needs of this population continue to be poorly understood. Objectives: To inform the development of a group intervention to improve social cognitive skills among teens with autism, four focus groups were conducted. Feedback was obtained from different groups with vested interests in treatments for this group. Methods: One focus group was composed of professionals (i.e., therapists, direct care providers) working with teens with HFA (N=4); another included parents or other close relatives of adolescents with autism (N=7); a third was comprised of the teens with HFA themselves (N=6); and the final focus group was made up of individuals from all three of the aforementioned groups (N=14). Each group responded to a series of identical questions during focus group sessions lasting approximately one hour and thirty minutes. Data was analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) which focuses on the primacy of subjective human experience and the ways in which individuals make sense of their experiences. Results: Reported findings include emergent themes including areas of agreement between these groups (i.e. central role of motivation, unique challenges of this age group) as well as areas of disagreement (i.e., role of parents in the intervention process, appropriate focal points of treatment). Conclusions: Implications and possible uses for this information in the development of targeted, tolerable, and effective interventions for adolescents with high-functioning autism are discussed. Suggestions for future research aimed at identifying salient themes in this group are also presented.
