Considerations and Perspectives on Interventions to Improve Social Cognition in Adolescents With ASD Without ID: Involving Parents in Social Skills Groups.

Improving social cognition and social skills is a challenge faced by individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder without Intellectual Disability at any age. This process is particularly critical during late adolescence (15-18 years), a developmental phase generally characterized by rich social experiences that usually foster the development of friendships. Nevertheless, for youth with ASD, lingering difficulties in social cognition often hinder their ability to generate responses considered socially appropriated. These social deficits can contribute to isolation that has a detrimental effect on mental health. In adulthood, deficits of social skills are strongly associated with an overall lack of support, characterized by a failure to integrate into the labor market, a high unemployment rate, social isolation, and a higher suicide rate. In clinical settings, social skills groups are well-established therapeutic means to improve social cognition and social skills. Nevertheless, these interventions vary greatly regarding their objectives, contents and duration. Moreover, few have been validated and replicated by research. Our aim is to bring certain perspectives to a type of intervention that are widely used in care settings. After reviewing its positive aspects for increasing social cognition, and its limitations, we will discuss strategies to facilitate the generalization of social skills in an ecological context. In particular, we will base our reflection on our clinical experience and on our current project to adapt the PEERS model for adolescents into French. We will consider the current trend of involving parents as "social coaches" to generalize the social knowledge acquired in the social skills groups.

Cancer Care of Children, Adolescents and Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorders: Key Information and Strategies for Oncology Teams.

Delivering optimal cancer care to children, adolescents and adults with ASD has recently become a healthcare priority and represents a major challenge for all providers involved. In this review, and after consideration of the available evidence, we concisely deliver key information on this heterogenous group of neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as recommendations and concrete tools for the enhanced oncological care of this vulnerable population of patients.

Targeting the specific vocabulary needs of at-risk preschoolers: a randomized study of the effectiveness of an educator-implemented intervention.

This randomized study examined the effectiveness of a preschool stimulation program created to teach words that had been selected by considering the needs of the target population of children. Twenty-two educators and their group of at-risk preschoolers (N = 222, M age = 4.27 years) were assigned to one of two conditions: control or intervention. In the latter condition, educators had to read specifically developed storybooks to their group and conduct stimulation activities. Despite the training and support they received, educators implemented the intervention with varying degrees of fidelity. Nonetheless, intent-to-treat comparison of the two conditions indicates that children in the intervention condition learned the meaning of a much greater number of words than their peers in the control condition. In addition, efficacy subset analyses that took into account fidelity of implementation show that the greatest gains were made by children who had an educator who had implemented the intervention reliably. Strategies for scaling up the intervention and optimizing its implementation are discussed.