A randomized controlled study of parent-assisted Children's Friendship Training with children having autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

This study evaluated Children's Friendship Training (CFT), a manualized parent-assisted intervention to improve social skills among second to fifth grade children with autism spectrum disorders. Comparison was made with a delayed treatment control group (DTC). Targeted skills included conversational skills, peer entry skills, developing friendship networks, good sportsmanship, good host behavior during play dates, and handling teasing. At post-testing, the CFT group was superior to the DTC group on parent measures of social skill and play date behavior, and child measures of popularity and loneliness, At 3-month follow-up, parent measures showed significant improvement from baseline. Post-hoc analysis indicated more than 87% of children receiving CFT showed reliable change on at least one measure at post-test and 66.7% after 3 months follow-up.

Fig. 1

Percentage of children exceeding reliable change (>2 SEs) or close to this threshold (1.5–2 SEs) after receiving CFT (CFT T1–T2 and DTC T2–T3) or waiting for treatment (DTC T1–T2) for child completed measures of loneliness and popularity

Fig. 2

Percentage of children exceeding reliable change (>2 SEs) or close to this threshold (1.5–2 SEs) after receiving CFT (CFT T1–T2 and DTC T2–T3) or waiting for treatment (DTC T1–T2) for Host, Conflict, and Disengage parent rated subscales of the Quality of Play Questionnaire

Fig. 3

Percentage of children exceeding reliable change (>2 SEs) or close to this threshold (1.5–2 SEs) after receiving CFT (CFT T1–T2 and DTC T2–T3) or waiting for treatment (DTC T1–T2) for Assertion, Self-Control, Externalizing and Internalizing subscales of the parent rated Social Skills Rating Scale