Social Development

Social difficulties are considered to be a defining characteristic of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Deficits in communication and socialization affect all children with ASD, regardless of where they fall on the spectrum. At The Applied Behavior Center for Autism, social development is always an overarching goal and is therefore targeted formally and incidentally throughout the day. The facility’s therapy, sensory, group instruction, social, and classrooms are ideal for daily social skills engagements.

Our approach of targeting social skills is highly dependent upon the child’s language, as these two abilities are inextricably intertwined. As an ABA/Verbal Behavior center, we use a child’s motivation to guide therapy. For early learners, our teaching focuses on the motivation of reinforcers and their requesting of these reinforcers, as this piece of language directly benefits the learner. In common terms, by transferring motivation to communicate with peers becomes an exercise in contriving situations, in which peers hold the key to a child’s access to preferred items and activities. Our children learn that communication with peers is rewarding and fun, and social interactions increases through the use of ABA principles such as this as well as many others.

As a child’s communication and social skills develop, we teach children the complexities of social interaction while applying behavioral principles to increase the frequency and accuracy of social exchanges. For children who present with the necessary language, social development focuses on teaching perspective-taking skills during social interactions. Appropriate verbal and non-verbal social behavior becomes more complex; during social exchanges we are required to constantly adjust our behavior based upon the thus experiences, views, and thoughts of our conversation partners.

To address this, our social skills programs use the Social Skill Streaming curriculum as a guide and Social Thinking to improve the underlying social skills knowledge required for the expression of related social skills.

In addition, we believe in the importance of typical peer models. As a result, we frequently invite typical peers to spend afternoons engaging in social activities at The Applied Behavior Center for Autism. We teach them how to generate interest and evoke language from our students. Many of these children have siblings with Autism or have experience volunteering with students with Autism. These afternoons prove to be fun for the students, typical peers, and alike!

We currently offer a social group for children with High FUnctioning Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, and PDD-NOS ages 9-11 on Monday's from 5:00-6:00pm. The group uses Social Thinking curriculm and ABA methadologies during the group.

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