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| Social Interventions | Definitions |
| Applied Behavioral Analysis | Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a systematic behavior approach to teach small steps to achieve a skill and improve behaviors that are socially important (Dillenburger, Keenan, Gallagher, & McElhinney, 2004). Instruction is used to teach a new skill and reinforce correct responses. |
| Behaviour Analytic Intervention | Behavior Analytic Intervention is derived from the British and is usually utilized in a one-to-one or small group setting that target asking questions, displaying affective behavior, giving commands, announcing information, and inviting classmates. |
| Child-Specific Interventions | Child-Specific Interventions involve direct instruction of initiation and response. Social skills training, prompting for social interaction, and reinforcing correct response in various settings are examples of child-specific interventions. The program includes: general instruction for improving social problem solving, high reinforcement for social responding, social skills training, adult-mediated prompting and reinforcement, and various generalization promotion techniques such as self-monitoring. |
| Collateral Skills Interventions | Collateral Skills Interventions involve social interactions between typical developing peers and children with autism. They deliver training in related skills, like play behavior and language. They include play skills, language/conversation skills, eye contact, joint attention, and prosocial skills such as sharing, waiting for a turn, and social smiling. This focuses on increasing social participation, or play, and academic responses to bring children with or without autism together (McConnell, 2002). |
| Comprehensive Interventions | Comprehensive Interventions include social skills training for children with autism. Moreover, it involves teachers delivering prompts, and reinforcing free play and combining 2 types of interventions (ecological variations, collateral skills interventions, child-specific interventions, or peer-mediated techniques) (McConnell, 2002). |
| Discrete Trial Training | Discrete Trial Training (DTT) is an intervention approach that effectively teaches children with autism, on a one-on-one basis, functional and pre-academic skills (Din & McLaughlin, 2000). It is a key element of the Lovaas method. It requires the therapists to break down skills into small tasks that are achievable and taught in a very structured manner. |
| Ecological Variations | Ecological Variations, which is also called environmental arrangement, contains modifications in activity structure or daily schedule and modifications in the nature of a child’s peer groups. This promotes social interaction by arranging the environment. |
| Floor Time | Floor Time is developed by Greenspan (1998) and is used to teach appropriate social skills to children with autism. Floor Time has been serving children with autism for more than 20 years. This intervention meets the child at his/her current developmental level, and building upon his/her particular set of strengths. |
| Integrated Play Group | Integrated Play Group Model (IPG) is based on Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory and targets the social and symbolic play skills of children with autism. This intervention is available to children between the ages of three to eleven. |
| Peer-Mediated Instruction | Peer-mediated Instruction takes place in inclusive
preschools. It involves the teacher and
several students in the classroom. This intervention improves social skills in which non-autistic peers of a child with autism are trained to interact and play with the child, reinforcing socially appropriate behavior such as sharing, helping, and giving affection. |
| Peer-Tutoring | Like
peer-mediated intervention, peer tutoring
also involves training peers in an inclusive classroom, which is one of the
essential components to having successful outcomes for both children with
autism and their typical peers. It is
used mostly for older children, but it could be used for preschoolers as well ( |
| Pivotal Response Treatment | Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) is developed to increase motivation in children with autism (Stahmer, 1999). It focuses on a set of procedures that increases the responsiveness to multiple stimuli and targets more than one behavior such as motivation, self-management, and child self-initiation. Implementing PRT to facilitate play involves clear instructions and questions, interspersal of maintenance tasks, child choice, direct reinforcement, reinforcement of goal-directed attempts, and turn taking. |
| Relationship Developmental Intervention | Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) is developed by Gutstein (2002) and is based on a developmental model that consists of 12 stages. It is a comprehensive program especially designed to remediate experience-sharing deficits in autism. |
| Social Stories | Social Stories are designed to provide high functioning autistic children the information they are lacking, to help them foster both interpersonal understanding and appropriate behavior (Kuoch & Mirenda, 2003). |
