Social Skills Training and Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD)

Julie Wolf & Jessica Lord & Marianne Barton & Deborah Fein

Impairment in social interaction has been identified as a core deficit in individuals with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD). Research has shown that compared with typically developing peers, children with PDD spend less time interacting with or in proximity to peers, spend less time in social play and more time in nonsocial play, spend more time in “purposeless” activities, receive fewer social initiations from other children, are less likely to respond to social initiations from peers, and are less likely to initiate social interactions with peers (McConnell, 2002). Currently, there are several interventions designed to target social interaction skills in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. This entry reviews some of the models of social skills intervention presently employed. Skillstreaming (McGinnis & Goldstein, 1997) is a psychoeducational intervention aimed at teaching a variety of specific prosocial behaviors to children with various disorders affecting social skills functioning. The model uses four steps LEAP ...

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