Abstract
The present study examined efficacy of a brief social skills intervention in regular classrooms for improving the social skills and school adjustment of junior high school students with higher (H-ALT) or lower (L-ALT) levels of autistic-like traits. The students with higher levels of autistic-like traits were screened with the Social Responsiveness Scale. All of the students in the intervention group participated in class-based social skills training (3 sessions); the control group students were taught using the regular curriculum. The results indicated that the overall social skills and physical stress responses of the students in the intervention group who had higher levels of autistic-like traits (n=9) improved significantly, whereas the students in the control group who had higher levels of autistic-like traits (n=5) did not show any significant improvement on those measures. In addition, the students in the class who had lower levels of autistic-like traits (n=54) showed significantly ameliorated school adjustment compared to the control group (n=51). This suggests that effects of class-based social skills training may differ, depending on the level of the students’ autistic-like traits.
