The present study examined effects of a peer group intervention for emotion regulation strategies on emotion regulation, emotion and desire suppression, and private self-consciousness in elementary school students with autism, and effects of peer learning on the acquisition of emotion regulation strategies. The participants were sixth grade students with autism and emotion dysregulation (N＝3). The program was comprised of 7 intervention sessions and 1 follow-up session. A pre-post design was used to compare the scores of the students' mothers on a questionnaire assessing emotion regulation, emotion and desire suppression, and private self-consciousness of their children. The results showed that those 3 scores improved for all students. Additionally, the students' self- or parent-reports confirmed that the participants had learned cognitive reappraisal strategies, recognized the utility of those strategies, and generalized them. These findings suggest that this peer group intervention may have been effective for teaching emotion regulation strategies to these students with autism spectrum disorder through improving their emotional self-awareness from peer-learning and through enabling them to discover their own strategies by incorporating their peers' strategies.
