Simultaneous Training for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Their Parents with a Focus on Social Skills Enhancement

Hiroko Okuno, Tomoka Yamamoto, Aika Tatsumi, Ikuko Mohri and Masako Taniike
Additional contact information
Hiroko Okuno: United Graduate School of Child Development, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
Tomoka Yamamoto: Molecular Research Center for Children’s Mental Development, United Graduate School of Child Development, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
Aika Tatsumi: Molecular Research Center for Children’s Mental Development, United Graduate School of Child Development, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
Ikuko Mohri: United Graduate School of Child Development, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
Masako Taniike: United Graduate School of Child Development, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan

IJERPH, 2016, vol. 13, issue 6, 1-15

Abstract: The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of simultaneous training for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their parents, with a focus on social skills enhancement (STSSE) by evaluating behavioral changes in children with ASD and changes in family functioning. STSSE was conducted on 17 children of elementary school age with ASD and their parents. Changes in scores on the social skills scale for education (SS-scale), the child behavior checklist, the Feetham Family Functioning Survey (FFFS), and the confidence degree questionnaire for families (CDQ) were used to assess the effectiveness of STSSE. Improvements were seen for “Communication Skills” on the children’s SS-scale ( p = 0.029). Significant improvements were seen in the mothers’ FFFS scores for “The 4th factor: illness and worries” ( p = 0.016) and in the median CDQ scores for one of 18 items after STSSE ( p = 0.01). Although additional studies with larger sample sizes will be necessary before these findings are generalizable, the positive changes seen in both parents and children as a result of STSSE are promising.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder (ASD); social skills; family functioning; parental confidence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/6/590/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/6/590/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:13:y:2016:i:6:p:590-:d:71991

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().