The efficacy of social emotional skill training on improving theory of mind in children with autism

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by persistent deficits in communication-social skills, and weakness in social skills in these children has negative consequences. New hypotheses relate autism spectrum disorder to a deficiency in the theory of mind. Teaching social-emotional skills by including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and emotional awareness can be an effective intervention to improve the theory of mind in these children. This is despite the fact that there is a research gap in this field and no study has been conducted to investigate this important issue.

The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of social-emotional skill training in improving the theory of mind in children with autism.

The design of the current research was a quasi-experimental type of pre-test-post-test and control group. The statistical population of the research included all male students with autism spectrum in the age group of 7 to 15 years in the city of Tehran in the academic year of 2019-2020, from which 20 people were randomly selected and divided into two experimental groups (10 people) and control (10 people) were replaced. For the experimental group, ten sessions of social-emotional skill training intervention taken from the educational package of Khosrotash et al. (2019) were implemented, but the control group did not receive any intervention. The data collection tools in this research included the autism spectrum assessment questionnaire (Ehlers et al., 1999) and theory of mind test (Muris et al., 1999), which were completed by parents. Also, the obtained data were analyzed using the covariance analysis method and the SPSS version 22 software.

The results show that social-emotional learning training has increased theory of mind scores in the experimental group (P<0.05). The effect size of the theory of mind score was 36%, and therefore social-emotional learning has been able to explain 36% of the changes in theory of mind scores.

According to the results obtained in the present study, it seems that social emotional skill training can affect the theory of mind in children with autism. Therefore, it is recommended to use it along with other treatment methods in order to improve emotional, social and communication skills in these children.