Effects of Social Skills Group Intervention Based on DeRosier Program on Decreasing Externalizing Behavior Problems in Autistic Children with High Functioning

Due to the increased prevalence of autism spectrum disorder, professionals need to access and study programs which are de-signed to improve fundamental problems of these children. The present study has inves-tigated the effectiveness of a social skills group intervention based on DeRosier Program for decreasing externalizing behavior problems in children with high functioning autism. The study was done as a single-subject design using the A-B-A method. The statistical popu-lation consisted of children with high-func-tioning autism in Isfahan. Three students were selected using a purposeful sampling. The base-lines were drawn up using a subscale of Externalizing Behavior Problems (Social Skills Improvement System Rating Scales) (SSIS). There were 20 training sessions, each for 40 minutes which were held by the researcher. The evaluations were completed during the treatment and followed up by one the child specialist teacher one month later. Based on the results of the visual analysis of the data, this program has been effective in reducing behavioral problems (PND for participants respectively, 100%, 85.71%, and 100%). The results from PEM, NAP, TauU (at least 0.85%) indicate the effectiveness of this program. Therefore, the improvement of social skills in a group-based intervention has led to the growth of positive communicative experiences and reduced be-havioral problems for this group of children.