Translation of an evidence-based social skills intervention for children with prenatal alcohol exposure in a community mental health setting.

BACKGROUND: Children with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) have significant social skills deficits and are often treated in community mental health settings. However, it remains unclear whether these children can be effectively treated using manualized, evidence-based interventions that have been designed for more general mental health populations. METHODS: To shed light on this issue, the effectiveness of Children's Friendship Training (CFT) versus Standard of Care (SOC) was assessed for 85 children ages 6 to 12 years with and without PAE in a community mental health center. RESULTS: Children participating in CFT showed significantly improved knowledge of appropriate social skills, improved self-concept, and improvements in parent-reported social skills compared to children in the SOC condition. Moreover, results revealed that within the CFT condition, children with PAE performed as well as children without PAE. Findings indicated that CFT, an evidence-based social skills intervention, yielded greater gains than a community SOC social skills intervention and was equally effective for children with PAE as for those without PAE. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that children with PAE can benefit from treatments initiated in community settings in which therapists are trained to understand their unique developmental needs, and that they can be successfully integrated into treatment protocols that include children without PAE.

Impact of a social skills intervention on the hostile attributions of children with prenatal alcohol exposure.

BACKGROUND: Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) has been linked to a wide array of developmental deficits, including significant impairments in social skills. Given the extensive body of evidence linking social information-processing patterns with social behavior, it is possible that social information-processing may represent one mechanism of behavioral change. The present investigation sought to answer the question of whether a well-established social skills intervention decreased the hostile attributions of children with PAE. Further, was there a differential impact of the intervention on hostile attributions in the context of peer provocation versus group entry scenarios? METHODS: Participants consisted of 100 children (51% male) with PAE between the ages of 6 and 12 years. Participants were randomly assigned to either a social skills intervention, Children's Friendship Training (CFT), or to a Delayed Treatment Control (DTC) condition. RESULTS: Analyses indicated that the social skills intervention resulted in a significantly lower proportion of hostile attributions in peer group entry, but not peer provocation, scenarios. This decrease was maintained over a 3-month follow-up period. CONCLUSIONS: Deficits in social information-processing among individuals with PAE can be improved through social skills intervention, and these changes may lead to more positive developmental outcomes.