The Effects of Social Stories on Cooperation, Assertiveness, Responsibility, and Self-Control Skills in Boys With High-Functioning Autism

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a constellation of neurodevelopmental conditions with heterogeneous etiologies. Deficiencies in social and communication skills should be considered as a major obstacle to the development of individuals with High–Functioning Autism (HFA) concerning participation in social settings and using social facilities. Cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, and self–control skills are generated during a child’s development. Accordingly, the lack of such skills in children with ASD causes them individual and social problems. Given the importance of this issue, it is necessary to adopt approaches that can help this population to overcome such defects. The present study aimed to determine the effects of an educational package based on native children’s stories in strengthening cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, and self–control Skills in children with HFA.

This was a descriptive quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest–follow–up and a control group design. The population of the study included 6–12–year–old boys with HFA from Mehrearya Rehabilitation Center in Karaj City, Iran, in the academic year of 2018–2019. Accordingly, 24 subjects were selected using the purposive sampling method and were randomly assigned into the experimental and control groups. The inclusion criteria of the study included receiving the definitive diagnosis of HFA in children by ASD specialists, the age range of 6 to 12 years, the lack of sensory deficits, like hearing and vision impairments, not receiving simultaneous intervention either directly or indirectly on social skills, providing informed consent forms and the willingness of children and their families to participate in this research. The exclusion criteria of the research included the diagnosis of severe aggression in children at the pretest stage; non–cooperation of the family during treatment, and >2 sessions of absenteeism. In the pretest, posttest, and follow–up phases, the Social Skills Rating System–Parent Form (SSRS) (Gresham & Elliot, 1990) was completed for the study subjects. After presenting 12 social stories in the experimental group, the repeated–measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed to analyze the obtained data in SPSS at the significance level of 0.05.

The present study findings suggested the effectiveness of native social stories in the experimental group, in which there was an increase in the scores of cooperation (p=0.002), assertiveness (p=0.016), and responsibility (p=0.015), compared to the control group. The presented social story training package had an increasing effect over time for all research variables, namely cooperation (p<0.001), assertiveness (p=0.001), responsibility (p<0.001), and self–control (p<0.001) in the explored children with HFA. The Bonferroni posthoc test data indicated a significant difference between the mean scores of pretest and posttest, as well as pretest and follow–up stages in terms of cooperation (p=0.001), assertiveness (p=0.001), responsibility (p=0.001), and self–control (p=0.001); thus, the relevant data highlighted the positive effect of the provided educational package based on native children’s stories in the experimental group and this effect remained persistent until the follow–up phase. However, there was no such significant difference between the mean values of the posttest and follow–up phases respecting cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, and self–control in them.

The current study data revealed that native children’s social stories could increase the skills of cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, and self–control in the studied children with HFA.