Adolescents with social communication challenges pose a challenge for clinicians and educators to find evidence-based interventions to support the social needs of their students (Lee et al., 2008; White, Keonig & Scahill, 2007). The existing research on elements of the Social Thinking® methodology has shown promising results. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the Social Thinking® Methodology for improving the ability to sustain social interactions in adolescents with social communication challenges. Two adolescents participated in this multiple baseline design across behaviors. The three dependent variables (DV) measured include the following: asking follow-up questions, adding-a-thought, and supporting comments. Results from the visual and statistical analyses showed an increase in each participant’s ability to sustain social interaction from pre-to-post intervention. Both participants self-reported varying perspectives of their ability to sustain social interactions.
Keywords: autism spectrum disorder (ASD), conversation, social cognition, social skills, Social Thinking