Brief Report:Measuring the Effectiveness of Teaching SocialThinking to Children with Asperger Syndrome(AS)and HighFunctioning Autism(HFA)

摘要

This is the first report from a large multiplebaseline single-subject design study of children with Aut-ism Spectrum Disorders(ASD).This brief report examineseffectiveness of teaching a social cognitive (SocialThinking) approach to six males with Asperger syndrome(AS) or High Functioning Autism(HFA).Data includedare restricted to pre-post-treatment comparisons of verbaland non-verbal social behaviors. Structured treatment andsemi-structured generalization sessions occurred over eightweeks.Results indicated significant changes from pre- topost- measures on both verbal/nonverbal"expected" and"unexpected" behaviors,significant increases in the subcat-egories of "expected verbal","listening/thinking with eyes",and"initiations", and robust decreases in the subcategories of"unexpected-verbal"and "unexpected-nonverbal".Impor-tance of social cognitive approaches for children AS andHFA is discussed.