Category Archives: Social Skills

Pick of the Week: Social Skills by Dr. Jed Baker – 20% Off!

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Save on these fantastic social skills materials from Dr. Jed Baker this week! Just use our promo code SOCIAL20 at the check-out.

The Social Skills Picture Book is a photographic picture book that depicts children demonstrating various social skills broken down into concrete steps. This book looks at the importance of visual aides in teaching children with autism. Different methods of teaching social skills are outlined, explaining initial instruction, review and generalization of skills. Some of the skills illustrated include:

  • Sharing
  • Taking Turns
  • Tone of Voice
  • Asking to Play
  • Showing Understanding

A concluding chapter addresses promoting peer acceptance through sensitivity training programs for students of various age groups and school staff. This is a complete and practical resource on social skills training for students of all ages!

The Social Skills Training Manual is a comprehensive how-to manual for teaching and developing social and communication skills in students with Asperger Syndrome and related pervasive developmental disorders. This manual covers 70 social skills that most commonly cause difficulty for individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Each skill is presented with activity sheets listing how to demonstrate, practice and reinforce the skill, both in the classroom and at home, and also contains a reproducible handout.

 

“Be a Friend: Songs for Social Skills Training” contains 16 original songs that teach invaluable social skills on an audio CD. Research has shown that learning occurs more rapidly when children are highly motivated to attend. The catchy tunes include:

  1. Be A Friend
  2. Hello
  3. Personal Space
  4. Eye Contact
  5. Volume of Speech
  6. Sharing
  7. Turns
  8. Ask to Play
  9. Compromise
  10. Complement
  11. Sensitive Topics
  12. Teasing
  13. Accepting No
  14. Making Mistakes
  15. Calm Down
  16. Feelings

How Occupational Therapy Can Benefit ABA Programs

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This month, we’re proud to feature a wonderful piece from the Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT), written by Amy McGinnis Stango, MS, OTR, MS, BCBA, on the benefits of occupational therapy as a supplement to your child’s ABA program. Amy is a nationally registered occupational therapist and board certified behavior analyst, and provides consultative direct and consultative services to families, clinics and schools across the country and internationally. She is also the co-author of Assessing Language and Learning with Pictures (ALL PICS), an assessment tool designed to make administration of the VB-MAPP more accurate, efficient, and cost-effective for schools, clinics, agencies, and private practitioners.

To learn more about ASAT, please visit their website at www.asatonline.org. You can also sign up for ASAT’s free newsletter, Science in Autism Treatment, and like them on Facebook!

My child is enrolled in an ABA-based program where he also receives some OT services. How can occupational therapy benefit my child’s ABA program?

Answered by Amy McGinnis Stango, MS, OTR, MS, BCBA

Occupational therapy (OT) can be beneficial as a supplemental treatment to your child’s ABA program. The goal of occupational therapy is to support an individual’s health and participation in life through engagement in occupations or everyday tasks (AOTA, 2008). The occupational therapy process begins with an evaluation. The evaluation helps to determine whether your child has met developmental milestones in a wide variety of occupations. The occupational therapy evaluation can help your child’s behavior analyst choose developmentally appropriate goals to be included in his ABA program. The OT evaluation may also be helpful in understanding why a child struggles with a particular task. For example, if your child struggles with handwriting, the evaluation can determine whether this difficulty stems from an inappropriate grasp, poor posture, muscle weakness, visual memory, or lack of eye-hand coordination. Pediatric occupational therapy typically addresses the following domains:

  • Play
  • Activities of Daily Living
  • Education
  • Social Participation

Play is the primary occupation of childhood and is often an area of need for children with autism. Occupational therapy can be effective in helping children learn new play skills (Stagnitti, O’Connor, & Sheppard, 2012). Many pediatric occupational therapists use a play-based approach to their sessions, exposing children to a variety of toys, games, and different ways to play. If your child engages in repetitive play behaviors or has limited interests, the occupational therapist may be helpful in finding other activities that share similar sensory properties of the toys your child already enjoys. Some of the sensory activities used in occupational therapy may function as reinforcers, which could be used in your child’s ABA sessions as well (McGinnis, Blakely, Harvey, Hodges & Rickards, 2013).

Occupational therapists typically include an assessment of activities of daily living (ADLs) as part of the evaluation. ADLs include those basic self-care tasks that an individual performs each day, such as eating, grooming, dressing, and using the bathroom. Occupational therapy can help to build the strength, coordination, and perception skills needed to perform these tasks. For example, if your child has oral motor deficits, occupational therapy can help your child learn the mouth movements necessary for chewing and drinking (Eckman, Williams, Riegel, & Paul, 2008; Gibbons, Williams, & Riegel, 2007). Occupational therapy can also help older children and adolescents learn more advanced ADLs, like independent bathing (Schillam, Beeman & Loshin, 1983). Occupational therapists are trained in identifying multiple ways to perform routine tasks, and can recommend an approach that will work best for your child and can be integrated into your routines at home (Kellegrew, 1998).

As individuals with autism age, occupational therapists can help teach skills that will lead to greater independence at home and in the community (McInerney & McInerney, 1992). These include preparing meals, managing money, shopping and using public transportation. Often these skills are more complex and may require an activity or task analysis that breaks the task down into simpler steps. With extensive training in developing task analyses, occupational therapists can share these analyses with your child’s ABA team so that skills can be taught across settings. If tasks are still difficult, an occupational therapist may recommend adaptive equipment to make a task easier. Occupational therapy can also help your child participate more fully in his or her educational program. Occupational therapy can help young children acquire tasks such as coloring and cutting (Case-Smith, Heaphy, Marr, Galvin, Koch, Ellis, & Perez, 1998), as well as help older children acquire skills such as handwriting (Denton, Cope, & Moser, 2006). If your child has difficulty moving through the school setting or actively participating in movement activities, occupational therapy can help your child develop functional mobility skills. Continue reading →

Autism Awareness Month: Free Social Skills Fortune Teller Activity

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IMG_0882-764x1024While these fortune tellers may not be able to tell your future, they are sure to help your children with autism develop their social skills!  This free printable, created by Joel Shaul from Autism Teaching Strategies, makes social learning fun by having students pair up and offer conversation starters using a Social Skills Fortune Teller.  All you have to do is print, cut, fold and play!

The activity comes with separate templates to make six different fortune tellers.  Each of the templates help students work on the following skills:

  • Asking questions
  • Giving compliments
  • Talking about emotions
  • As well as self-help strategies for teasing and bullying.

For further tips, instructions for use, and to download this free printable, click here and don’t forget to share all the other fun ways you and your students have fun developing social skills by leaving a comment below!

Product Highlight: POWER-Solving® – A new social skills curriculum

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POWER-Solving-Feature_01

Available in child and adolescent levels, this new social skills curriculum teaches students how to become independent problem-solvers via a hands-on and interactive approach through visual cues and supports.

We offer class kits including 5 or 10 sets of Student Workbooks and Facilitator Guides to accommodate larger groups.

This social skills curriculum teaches students to problem-solve first using their “toolbox” (i.e., the five steps of POWER-Solving®) and then to apply this “toolbox” to various social situations, allowing them to develop and enhance their social-emotional skills. Child and Adolescent Student Workbook Sets when paired with their corresponding Facilitator Guides will help students successfully solve problems in various social situations at school, home, and in the community.

Each Student Workbook Set and Facilitator’s Guide Set covers 4 areas of everyday social situations:

  1. Introduction (recommended that students complete this first)
  2. Social Conversation
  3. Developing Friendships
  4. Anger Management

Learn more about the curriculum here.

The Social Problem-Solving Model: Promoting Greater Social Independence – Part II

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In continuing our exclusive social problem-solving series, Drs. Gordon and Selbst, developers of the new POWER-Solving® Curriculum, have addressed the importance of social information processing as a framework for understanding how children and adolescents get along with their peers and adults.

The Social Problem-Solving Model: Promoting Greater Independence – Part II
Steven B. Gordon, PhD, ABPP & Michael C. Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D

Social Information Processing (SIP) is a widely studied framework for understanding why some children and adolescents have difficulty getting along with their peers and adults.

A well-known SIP model developed by Crick and Dodge (1994) describes six stages of information processing that individuals cycle through when responding to a particular social situation:

  1. encoding (attending to and encoding the relevant cues);
  2. interpreting (making a judgment about what is going on);
  3. clarifying goals (deciding what their goal is in the particular situation);
  4. generating responses (identifying different behavioral strategies for attaining the decided upon goal);
  5. deciding on the response (evaluating the likelihood that each potential strategy will help reach their goal, and choosing which strategy to implement);
  6. and performing the response (doing the chosen response).

These steps operate in real time and frequently outside of conscious awareness. Many studies have demonstrated that children and adolescents have deficits at multiple stages of the SIP model which impact their development of appropriate peer interactions and the development of aggressive behaviors (Lansford, Malone, Dodge, Crozier, Pettit and Bates, 2006).

As a result, they have difficulty attending to and interpreting social cues, adopting pro-social goals and utilizing safe, effective and non-aggressive strategies to handle conflict situations. The development of strong social skills has been shown to contribute to the initiation and maintenance of positive relationships with others.

POWER-Solving BooksThe POWER-Solving® Curriculum (Selbst and Gordon, 2012) is heavily influenced by the components of the SIP model as seen in the five steps of POWER-Solving, easily learned in the acronym POWER:

  • Put the problem into words;
  • Observe your feelings;
  • Work out your goal;
  • Explore possible solutions;
  • Review your plan

The curriculum is comprised of several modules, each with their own materials for facilitators and students. While it is critical for the student to learn the POWER-Solving® Steps first (i.e., the “toolbox”), the facilitator can determine the sequence of the subsequent modules. For example, one may prefer to move to the Anger Management module after the introduction. Alternatively, one may decide to move to Social Conversation or Developing Friendships. The goal is for students to learn valuable POWER-Solving skills that they can apply to an infinite number of social situations throughout their lives.

REFERENCES

Crick, N.R., & Dodge, K.A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115(1), 74–101. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.115.1.74.

Lansford, J.E., Malone, P.S., Dodge, K.A., Crozier, J.C., Pettit, G.S., & Bates, J.E. (2006). A 12-year prospective study of patterns of social information processing problems and externalizing behaviors. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 34, 715-724.

Selbst, M.C. and Gordon, S.B. (2012). POWER-Solving: Stepping stones to solving life’s everyday social problems. Somerset, NJ: Behavior Therapy Associates.

ABOUT STEVEN B. GORDON, PHD, ABPP

Steven B. Gordon, PhD, ABPP is the Founder and Executive Director of Behavior Therapy Associates, P.A. He is a clinical psychologist and is licensed in New Jersey. Dr. Gordon is also Board Certified in Cognitive and Behavioral Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology and is a Diplomate in Behavior Therapy from the American Board of Behavioral Psychology. Dr. Gordon has co-authored three books, published numerous articles, presented papers at local and national conferences, and served on editorial boards of professional journals. Most recently, Dr. Gordon and Dr. Selbst have co-authored the new social-emotional skills program POWER-Solving: Stepping Stones to Solving Life’s Everyday Social Problems. Dr. Gordon’s professional interests range from providing assessment and treatment for individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders, AD/HD and other disruptive behavior disorders associated with childhood and adolescence. He has co-founded and is the Executive Director of HI-STEP® Summer Program, which is an intensive five-week day program for children to improve their social skills and problem solving ability. In addition, Dr. Gordon has had extensive experience providing clinical services not only for children diagnosed with phobias, stress, selective mutism, obsessive compulsive disorders and depression, but also with adults coping with anxiety,depression and relationship difficulties. Dr. Gordon is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and the New Jersey Psychological Association.

ABOUT MICHAEL C. SELBST, PHD, BCBA-D

Michael C. Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D is Director of Behavior Therapy Associates, P.A. He is a Licensed Psychologist and a Certified School Psychologist in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He is also a Board Certified Behavior Analyst at the Doctoral level. Dr. Selbst has co-founded and is the Executive Director of HI-STEP® Summer Program, which is an intensive five-week day program for children to improve their social skills and problem solving ability, and the Director of the Weekend to Improve Social Effectiveness (W.I.S.E.). He has extensive experience working with pre-school aged children through adults, including individuals who have social skills deficits, emotional and behavioral difficulties, learning disabilities, gifted, and children with developmental delays, including those with Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome. Dr. Selbst consults to numerous public and private schools, assisting parents, teachers, and mental health professionals, and presents workshops on all topics highlighted above, as well as Parenting Strategies, Depression, and Suicide Prevention. Dr. Selbst and Dr. Gordon have co-authored the new social-emotional skills program POWER-Solving: Stepping Stones to Solving Life’s Everyday Social Problems. Dr. Selbst is a member of the following professional organizations: American Psychological Association; National Association of School Psychologists; Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies; Association for Behavior Analysis International; Association for Contextual Behavioral Science; New Jersey Psychological Association; and New Jersey Association of School Psychologists.

The Social Problem-Solving Model: Promoting Greater Social Independence – Part I

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This week, in continuing the spirit of Autism Awareness, we’re excited to feature a two-part expert article on a social problem-solving intervention method by Steven Gordon, PhD, ABPP, and Michael Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D, who are the founder and directors of Behavior Therapy Associates, P.A.  Here in Part I, Drs. Gordon and Selbst have addressed the outcomes of different types of social skills training and what an effective social skills teaching program encompasses in order to promote independence in learners.

The Social Problem-Solving Model: Promoting Greater Independence – Part I
Steven B. Gordon, PhD, ABPP & Michael C. Selbst, PhD, BCBA-D

Students with social skills deficits often have difficulty in many of the following areas: sharing, handling frustration, controlling their temper, ending arguments, responding to bullying and teasing, making friends, and complying with requests.

These impairments require direct instruction to address the deficits. In addition, these impairments are exacerbated for those with a mental health diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Nonverbal Learning Disorder.

A large body of research indicates that social skills training produces short and long term positive outcomes. The improvement in social skills has many benefits: an increase in students’ positive behavior, reduction in negative behavior, improvements in academic performance, more positive attitudes toward school, and increase preparation for success in adulthood.

 

Social skills learning programs have yielded significant benefits in many studies conducted to date. “The ultimate goal of a social skills program is to teach the interpersonal, problem-solving, and conflict resolution skills that students need relative to interpersonal, problem-solving, and conflict resolution interactions. In a generic sense, then, students with good social skills are unlikely to engage in inappropriate internalizing or externalizing behaviors” (Knoff, 2014). In one important meta-analysis by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), it was concluded that social and emotional programs are effective in both school and after-school settings, for students with and without behavioral and emotional problems, for racially and ethnically diverse students from urban, rural, and suburban settings across the K-12 grade range.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) interventions improve students’ social-emotional skills, attitudes about self and others, connection to school, and increase positive social behavior while reducing conduct problems and emotional distress. CASEL’s review also indicates that school-based programs are most effectively conducted by school staff (e.g., teachers, student support staff) and suggest that they can be effectively incorporated into routine educational practice. In light of CASEL’s positive findings, it has recommend that federal, state, and local policies and practices encourage the broad implementation of well-designed, evidence-based social and emotional programs in schools. Continue reading →

Facilitating Social Groups for Students with Autism

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In honor of Autism Awareness Month, we’re pleased to highlight an NYC-based agency called East Side Social this week! Alicia Allgood is a BCBA and co-founder of East Side Social. With her co-founder Kimia Tehrani, BCBA, they organize social groups and also provide a wealth of additional services for both parents and practitioners in the field of autism. Alicia was kind enough to provide some very comprehensive answers to our BCBA consultant Sam Blanco’s questions about facilitating social groups for learners with autism. You can learn more about East Side Social here.

Autism Awareness Highlights: Interview with Alicia Allgood, MSEd, BCBA
Co-founder of East Side Social, New York, NY

Facilitating Social Groups for Students with AutismSam: What prompted you to begin East Side Social?

Alicia: I co-facilitated social groups in San Diego in the early 2000’s with an amazing group, Comprehensive Autism Services and Education. They provided a number of other services, but the social group was the directing psychologists’ pet project, and you could really tell for the quality. It was wonderful to see these quirky, amazing kids that were struggling socially come into this group and make friends. They engaged with one another in significant ways that impacted their sense of well-being and confidence, all the while learning how to be more and more socially appropriate. I was inspired. When I met Kimia in New York, she and I found we worked very well together. I mentioned my interest in starting such a group in New York, and Kimia held me to it. We both saw a need for these services here, but there really wasn’t much being offered at the time, and that which was being offered didn’t have a behavior analytic approach. In our mind, this suggested they weren’t objectively verifying the effect of their programs, nor were they necessarily using evidence-based practiced to teach the skills these kids needed to learn. We saw a need, we were inspired, and so made the necessary movements to begin East Side Social.

Sam: What is the primary challenge to organizing social skills groups? How have you addressed it?

Alicia: We were both private practitioners prior to starting this social group. Starting a business is a whole other beast in its own right, and being a good technician doesn’t necessarily mean you’re prepared to grow that skill into an actual business. We were caught a bit by surprise by all that would be necessary on the back end. From marketing to balancing the budget and handling insurance billing, we were not prepared to take all of that on while maintaining our private clients and actually preparing for and leading the social group. Realizing our deficits along the way, we’ve hired consultants and people to support the back end, and that is what has really made this possible. We couldn’t do what we do without the support of a small group of really wonderful people. It’s also been extremely challenging to find a way to collect data on target behavior during our groups. We’re suddenly extremely sympathetic to classroom teachers who are asked to collect data on their students. We have tried data collection systems into our token economies. We’ve also used time sampling data, and once when feeling highly ambitious and having approval of all parents, we video-taped all groups and spent hours upon hours watching and re-watching these videos, tracking target group behavior and individual learner behavior. This is a continuous work in progress that we feel dedicated to on account of our commitment to ethical behavior analytic practice. It’s also a bit fun to solve this puzzle. Continue reading →

Pick of the Week: Teaching Language & Conversation Workbooks

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Teach language and conversation skills to students with autism with these great books! This week, take 15% off any or all 3 of these great teacher guides and student workbooks. Use promo code LANGUAGE at check-out to redeem your savings.

DRB_380_Teaching_Kids_of_All_Ages_to_Ask_QuestionsTeaching Kids of All Ages to Ask Questions is a great source for teaching students at different levels how to ask and answer questions. The book also covers:

  • Simple past, present and future tense
  • Regular and irregular verbs
  • Progressive present, past, and future tense verbs
  • Perfect present, past, and future tense verbs
  • Perfect progressive present, past and future tense verbs
  • Negative questions
  • Conditional statements

This workbook is great for a comprehensive coverage of Wh-Questions within various contexts.

DRB_385_Teaching_Conversation_to_Children_with_AutismTeaching Conversation to Children with Autism Scripts and Script Fading provides step-by-step instructions to parents and teachers on how to teach conversation skills. Because many individuals with autism have difficulty initiating and maintaining conversation, this book describes how scripts and script fading can provide a predictable and meaningful structure for these individuals to engage in conversation. The goal is for these scripts to then progress to spontaneous language. This book covers: scripts for readers and non-readers; conversation activities; activity schedules; prompts and rewards; and observing, evaluating and measuring results.

 

DRB_045_Teach_Me_LanguageTeach Me Language is a social language manual for children with autism, Asperger’s syndrome, and related developmental disorders. Based on professional speech pathology methods, this book targets social language, general knowledge, grammar and syntax, functional knowledge, written expression and language-based academic concepts. Teach Me Language is designed to take the child from one and two word utterances to more complex sentences that lay the foundation for social conversation.

Don’t forget to use our promotional code LANGUAGE at check-out this week to save 15%* on any or all of these books for teaching language & conversation!

*Offer is valid through March 22, 2016 at 11:59pm EST. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in your code LANGUAGE at check-out! Call (800) 853-1057 with any inquiries.

Pick of the Week: Clue Cards – 5 games in one to teach socioemotional skills

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Clue Cards teaches students how to interpret social situations, read facial expressions, and understand metaphorical forms of speech. This week, you can save 15%* on Clue Cards – just enter promo code CLUECARDS when you check out online! Play 5 different games to teach inferencing, faces and feelings, body language, exploring Wh- questions, and a variety of common idioms!

Therapists, teachers and parents can uses the cards and games included in this set to help students perceive and understand the details of social presentation. Because the cards are flexible and adaptable, they can be used with both younger and older children, with mild or sever socioemotional difficulties. There are instructions for 5 different games along with 100 reward chips, targeted for players ages 6–16.

  1. Get a Clue: Players find “clues” in social situations and make inferences based on those clues (15 Social Situation Cards).
  2. Faces and Feelings: Link expressions with associated emotions (20 Feeling Cards, 20 Faces Cards).
  3. Body Language: Matching photos and captions, children explore body language for clues about thoughts and feelings (24 Photo Cards, 24 Caption Cards).
  4. The 5 W’s: Analyze 10 social scenes by asking “who-what-where-when-why” questions (10 Social Scene Cards, 1 Spinner).
  5. In Other Words: Learn the idioms and proverbs that often pop up in social conversation (30 Idiom Cards, 30 Idiom Definition Cards, 26 Proverb Cards, 26 Proverb Definition Cards).

*Offer lasts through March 1, 2016 at 11:59 PM EST. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in your code CLUECARDS at check-out! Not valid on past purchases.

Pick of the Week: Wh- Question ConversaCards

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Encourage discussion and critical thinking in students with these decks of Wh- Question ConversaCards. This week, you can also save 15%* on your order of any or all of these sets. Just use promo code WHCARDS when you check out online or over the phone!

Covering 6 different topics – Where Does It Go, What Happened, What Comes Next, What Do You Do With It, What Do You Need, and What Do You Like – each set comes with 54 cards and a Resource Guide containing helpful strategies and suggestions for prompts. Learning to respond to “what” and “where” questions is the foundation of conversation and expressive language. These flashcards can be used to teach sequencing, storytelling and logical thinking for a wide range of ability levels!

Don’t forget to use our promo code WHCARDS to take 15% off* when you order your set(s) of Wh- Question ConversaCards this week!

*Offer is valid through February 16, 2016. Be sure there are no spaces or dashes in your code WHCARDS at check-out! Call our customer service team at (800) 853-1057 with inquiries.