SOSTA-Net: A Large Scale, Multi-Center, Randomised Controlled Trial of the Autism Specific Social Skills Training SOSTA-FRA

Background:  

Social skills training has strongly been recommended as treatment of choice for children and adolescents with HF-ASD. Most published studies have implemented a pre-post design, and only a few small scale, randomised controlled studies have been performed. Long-term outcome has rarely been assessed.

As HF-ASD individuals suffer from impairments in basic non-verbal and verbal communication skills, social understanding, decoding of emotional expression, self-perception, social perception, planning, problem solving, and impulse control, but on the other hand are strongly interested in contact with peers and friendships, and also have good skills of role-playing and rule-based learning, these aspects were included in the highly standardized and manualized 12-week group treatment program SOSTA-FRA. Homework aims to promote generalization, and positive re-inforcement strategies increase motivation and lead to a positive interaction between group participants.

Objectives:  

Here, we describe the manualized training and the study design, and present preliminary descriptive data on the study participants.

Methods:  

Two-hundred and twenty HF-ASD individuals, aged 8 – 20 years old, meeting ADI-R and AODS criteria for autism, Asperger Syndrome or PDD-nos, with an IQ > 70 will be included into the study. The following study centres participate: University departments of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Aachen, Frankfurt, Homburg, Köln, Mannheim, and Würzburg, Germany. The primary outcome measure is change in parent rated SRS; secondary outcome measures are the teacher rated SRS, CBCL, TRF, SDQ, and DIKJ at post-treatment and after 3 months follow-up.

Results:  

To date (November 2011), 135 children have been randomized.

Conclusions:  

The manualized social skills training program SOSTA-FRA is a program which is well accepted by children and adolescents with HF-ASD and can easily be implemented in professional settings, where behavioral therapy is practised.