Social skills interventions for preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A description of single- subject design studies

Social skill development is one of the primary areas of intervention for young children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The purpose of this article was to conduct a retrospective review of social skills intervention research for preschool children with ASD. A review of 17 single-subject design studies from twelve journals (1999-2006) was conducted. We assessed information concerning the features of social skills interventions, the elements of single subject designs utilized across studies, and the overall success of interventions for social behaviors. A comparison with a review conducted by Vaughn et al. (2003) revealed some important common elements of interventions such as reinforcement, modeling and prompting, providing converging evidence from group design studies and single subject studies.