If you work with children with autism, you have probably targeted social skills on a regular basis. A deficit in social skills is one of the most identifiable characteristics of autism, leading to life-long challenges in developing relationships with others, functioning within social environments, and working as a productive member of a community.  This area of need was the focus of a recent synthesis that compared studies investigating different treatment interventions that target social skills.

Treatment methodologies most mentioned include Applied Behavior Analysis, Video Modeling, social groups (school age; within the classroom or therapy setting), naturalistic (i.e., behavioral methods within typical environment), and parent/peer training.  These methods have emerging evidence for use with this population, but only one was considered by the authors to be evidence-based practice: social groups. Video modeling was considered an emerging practice. There was some evidence indicating that other methods (ABA, naturalistic) are emerging and may develop enough evidence to become best practice in the future. Keep in mind that there are difficulties in comparing studies due to study variability and other limitations, so this study is in no way an exhaustive review of these treatment methods.

What about music therapy?  Well, there is no mention of music therapy within the text of the study, meaning that it wasn’t one of the methods that had enough research to consider evidence-based practice or even emerging evidence-based practice.  However, two music therapy studies were included in the studies that were analyzed for this synthesis (Kern & Aldridge, 2006;  Kern, Wolery, & Aldridge, 2007). These inclusion of these studies indicates that they were found using non-music search terms (i.e., autism, social) and that they met the research study inclusion criteria. The down-side? Only two studies on music therapy in an 7-year span were located.

What could this mean for current practice?  The finding that social groups for school-age children were most effective in training social skills seems to be common sense. If you want a child to learn how to interact with others you probably need “others” in the room. This may be reason to establish social group sessions for your clients, if you currently see them in 1:1 treatment settings. Furthermore, we need more research on the use of music therapy for developing social skills in children with autism so that we can rightfully use the term “evidence-based practice”. Keep in mind that the results of this study indicated that we are not the only treatment method that needs more research – in fact there are many methods that are in the “same boat”.

Reviewed Study:

Reichow, B., & Volkmar, F.R. (2010). Social skills interventions for individuals with autism: Evaluation for evidence-based practices within a best evidence synthesis framework. J Autism Dev Disord., 40(2), 149-66. PMID: 19655240

Studies included in Reichow synthesis:

Kern, P., & Aldridge, D. (2006). Using embedded music therapy interventions to support outdoor play of young children with autism in an inclusive community-based child care program. Journal of Music Therapy, 43, 270–294. PMID: 17348756

Kern, P., Wolery, M., & Aldridge, D. (2007). Use of songs to promote independence in morning greeting routines for young children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1264–1271. PMID: 17120150