Social stories: mechanisms of effectiveness in increasing game play skills in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder using a pretest posttest repeated measures randomized control group design.

An increasing body of literature has indicated that social stories are an effective way to teach individuals diagnosed with autism appropriate social behavior. This study compared two formats of a social story targeting the improvement of social skills during game play using a pretest posttest repeated measures randomized control group design. A total of 45 children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) ages 7-14 were randomly assigned to standard, directive, or control story conditions. Results demonstrated that the standard and directive story formats were equally as effective in eliciting, generalizing and maintaining the targeted social skills in participants who had prior game play experience and Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI) scores from the WISC-IV intelligence test in the borderline range or above.

The role of adaptive behavior in autism spectrum disorders: implications for functional outcome.

The relationship between adaptive functioning and autism symptomatology was examined in 1,089 verbal youths with ASD examining results on Vineland-II, IQ, and measures of ASD severity. Strong positive relationships were found between Vineland subscales and IQ. Vineland Composite was negatively associated with age. IQ accounted a significant amount of the variance in overall adaptive skills (55%) beyond age and ASD severity. Individuals with ASD demonstrated significant adaptive deficits and negligible associations were found between the level of autism symptomatology and adaptive behavior. The results indicate that IQ is a strong predictor of adaptive behavior, the gap between IQ and adaptive impairments decreases in lower functioning individuals with ASD, and older individuals have a greater gap between IQ and adaptive skills.