Training Social Problem Solving Skills in Adolescents with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (HFASD)

Background:

Individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) typically have deficits in socialization that interfere with their educational experience and quality of life.  They require explicit instruction to acquire age-appropriate social skills.  There is a paucity of research that includes adolescents with HFASD, but there are indications that they respond well to computer-assisted instruction. 

Objectives:

To develop technology that can be used to teach effective problem solving by allowing an individual to experience social situations and choose appropriate responses to unexpected events.  Technology can also assist and support reflecting on those experiences, providing the individual with an opportunity to process information that can be recalled for later use. Finally, it can gather data to assess the individual’s skill level and determine the difficulty of subsequently presented scenarios.

Methods:

A prototype made up of three scenarios was created. Each scenario involves the presentation of a social situation in which some obstacle arises (e.g. Your family is going to a new restaurant). The software then guides participants as they navigate the social situation and find an acceptable solution.  Each step in the situation is presented with audio narration, text, and a picture. The scenarios differ in level of difficulty, and within each scenario the possible solutions vary in complexity.  Once the student has found a solution they are asked to reflect on their decisions by recreating the social story using puzzle pieces that are placed in order on a timeline. Finally the story is played back to them. The users path through the software was logged by the system.

An exploratory study was conducted in a large metropolitan city with 8 males (age: 13-19 with HFASD).  On the first day problem solving tests were administered (Test of Problem Solving 2-A (TOPS 2A) and the Social Problem Solving Inventory (SPSI)) to determine the participants’ social problem solving competence.  The following week the participants were asked to interact with the software and complete one scenario each day for three consecutive days.  After completing each scenario the participants were allowed to play a computer game.

Results:

Only 2 participants were able to complete the standardized assessments. Despite this difficulty, all the participants were able to successfully complete both the experience and reflection components of all 3 scenarios in our system. Log data indicated that the choices the participants made lead for multiple paths to a successful solution to be explored. In addition, 3 of the 8 participants chose solutions that were considered to be more complex in each of the three scenarios, and all the participants chose a complex path in at least one scenario. Overall, all the participants responded positively to the system.

Conclusions:

The system enables adolescents with HFASD to practice an effective problem solving process. Participants in our study that were unable to complete standardized assessments of social competence were able to use our software with ease. In the future additional scenarios will be developed based on the observed and expressed needs of both educators and adolescents on the spectrum.