Social Skills Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Social skills interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) encompass a diverse array of structured approaches designed to enhance social communication, peer interaction and adaptive functioning. Core strategies include group-based social skills training, peer-mediated models, technology-assisted programmes and school-based implementation. Group training often combines didactic instruction, role‐play and real-world practice to foster conversational skills, emotion recognition and perspective-taking. Peer-mediated interventions leverage typically developing peers as natural social coaches to promote inclusion and reduce isolation in classrooms and community settings. Digital platforms and telehealth delivery have expanded accessibility, enabling remote coaching, virtual social groups and app-based exercises. Across settings, interventions demonstrate small to moderate gains in social responsiveness, friendship quality and network inclusion, though effects on generalised real-world engagement vary. Global applications emphasise cultural adaptation and multi-level support, highlighting the need for fidelity monitoring, sustained implementation and collaboration among educators, clinicians and families.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Social Skills Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in social skills interventions for autism spectrum disorder across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Social skills interventions: Structured programmes designed to teach social communication, reciprocity and interpersonal problem-solving.

Peer-mediated intervention: An approach in which typically developing peers are trained to support and model social engagement for autistic individuals.

Telehealth: Delivery of therapeutic services via digital communication technologies, enabling remote access to intervention content and coaching.

Social responsiveness: The capacity to perceive, interpret and appropriately respond to social cues and interactions.

Loneliness: The subjective distress arising from a perceived gap between desired and actual social relationships.

References

1. Efficacy of PEERS® for Adolescents via Telehealth Delivery. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (2022).
2. Peer-mediated intervention through Snapchat: Enhancing social interactions among students with Autism. International Journal of Data and Network Science (2023).
3. A longitudinal study of loneliness in autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities: Coping with loneliness from childhood through adulthood. Autism (2023).