Increasing Social Interactions Using Typical Peer Training

Background: Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are often placed in integrated educational and recreational environments in the hopes that this will encourage their social development and provide opportunities for social interaction with typically developing peers. Unfortunately, mere proximity with typical peers is often not enough to produce social integration, and children with ASD often end up socially isolated even in the midst of a large group of peers. Peer training programs are designed to equip typical peers with functional skills that they can use to increase the number of positive social interactions that they have with their peers with ASD.

Objectives: (1) To examine the effectiveness of a peer training curriculum in increasing social interactions between children with ASD and their typical peers in a summer camp environment and (2) to explore what child characteristics might predict success in the peer training program.

Methods:  At intake parents of both typical children, and children with ASD, completed questionnaire packages and structured interviews providing information on their child’s cognitive, social, and emotional development as well as behavioral profiles. Prior to any peer training being done baseline data was gathered tracking the rate of social interactions between children with ASD and their typically developing peers. Typical peers were then provided with peer-training sessions that employed videos, social stories, direct instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and reward charts to equip them with practical skills that they could use to engage their peers with ASD in social interactions. Following the completion of the peer-training curriculum data was gathered tracking the rate of social interactions between children with ASD and their typically developing peers.

Results:  Analysis of the data revealed extremely low rates of social interactions between typical peers and children with ASD prior to the social skills training being implemented, and significantly higher rates of social interactions after social skills training was completed. While the sample size was insufficient for an in-depth statistical analysis of individual typical-peer characteristics that predicted success some interesting trends were identified and explored.

Conclusions:  Consistent with previous findings the data from the present study documents how mere proximity to typical peers is not enough to establish successful social integration between children with ASD and their typical peers. A peer training curriculum designed to equip typical peers with practical skills that they could use to socially engage their peers with ASD was found to significantly increase the rate of social interactions between children with ASD and their typical peers. While more research is needed, some interesting trends were identified when child-specific variables were examined in an attempt to predict which typical peers would be most successful at implementing the skills they learned during their peer-training program with their peers with ASD.