| name | social-skills-training |
| description | Use when assessing social skill deficits, designing BST-based social skills training programs, implementing video modeling or peer-mediated interventions, planning social skills groups, or programming for generalization of social behavior across settings and people. |
Social Skills Training
Social skills training (SST) encompasses a range of behavioral procedures designed to teach, strengthen, and generalize social interaction repertoires. Social skills are complex behavioral chains that involve discriminating social cues, selecting contextually appropriate responses, executing those responses, and adjusting based on the social partner's reaction. Deficits in social skills are pervasive across many clinical populations and are among the most impactful targets in ABA programming because of their broad effects on quality of life, peer relationships, inclusion, and independence.
Social Skills Assessment
Effective SST begins with a thorough assessment to identify specific skill deficits (the learner lacks the skill) vs. performance deficits (the skill is in the repertoire but not performed consistently).
Assessment Methods
Direct observation: Observe the learner in natural social contexts (playground, classroom, lunchroom, community). Record frequency, duration, and quality of social initiations, responses, turn-taking, topic maintenance, and social reciprocity. This is the gold standard — it reveals what the learner actually does, not what they can do.
Structured role play: Present standardized social scenarios and score the learner's response. Useful for assessing skills that may not occur frequently in natural observation (e.g., assertiveness, conflict resolution, responding to teasing).
Rating scales: Standardized instruments (e.g., Social Skills Improvement System [SSIS], Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales — Socialization domain) completed by parents, teachers, and the learner. Provide norm-referenced data and track progress over time.
Sociometric measures: Peer nominations ("Who do you like to play with?") and peer ratings. Reveal the learner's social standing within a peer group. Useful for identifying learners at risk for social isolation.
Functional assessment of social behavior: When social behavior is absent, determine why — is it a skill deficit (cannot perform), a performance deficit (can but does not), a fluency deficit (can but not quickly/smoothly enough), or an interfering behavior problem (competing responses)?
Behavioral Skills Training (BST)
BST is the gold-standard teaching package for social skills. It includes four sequential components:
1. Instruction
Provide explicit verbal or written rules about the target social skill:
- What the skill is and why it matters
- When to use it (discriminative stimuli)
- What it looks like (specific behavioral steps)
- What it does not look like (examples of errors)
Keep instructions concise and age-appropriate. For young children, use simple language and visual supports. For adolescents and adults, include rationale and social context.
2. Modeling
Demonstrate the target skill so the learner can observe the correct performance:
- Live modeling: The clinician or a peer demonstrates the skill in a role-play scenario
- Video modeling: A pre-recorded demonstration (see below for detailed video modeling procedures)
- Show both positive examples (correct performance) and negative examples (common errors) with explicit contrast
- Model in contexts similar to where the learner will use the skill
3. Rehearsal (Role Play)
The learner practices the skill in a structured role-play scenario:
- Create scenarios that approximate natural social situations
- Start with easier scenarios and increase social complexity
- Allow multiple practice opportunities
- Rotate role-play partners (peers, clinicians, family members)
- Practice both initiating and responding roles
4. Feedback
Immediately after rehearsal, provide specific feedback:
- Positive feedback first: Identify exactly what the learner did correctly ("You looked at her face and waited for her to finish talking before you responded — that was excellent turn-taking")
- Corrective feedback: Identify specific components that need improvement and how to improve them ("Next time, try asking a follow-up question about what she said instead of changing the topic")
- Re-rehearse: Practice again incorporating the feedback
- Feedback should be specific to observable behavior, not vague ("good job" is insufficient)
Video Modeling
Types of Video Modeling
Basic video modeling: A peer or adult model demonstrates the target skill on video. The learner watches the video before practicing.
Video self-modeling (VSM): The learner is recorded performing the skill correctly (often with prompts that are edited out), then watches themselves performing the skill. Powerful because the learner sees themselves as competent. Requires editing capability.
Point-of-view video modeling: The video is filmed from the learner's perspective (first-person view). The learner sees the social scenario as they would experience it. Particularly useful for learners who struggle with perspective-taking.
Video prompting: Video segments are shown one step at a time, with the learner performing each step before viewing the next. Useful for complex social routines with many steps.
Implementation
- Select a clearly defined target skill with behavioral steps
- Create a script for the video scenario
- Record the video with clear audio and visual quality
- Show the video to the learner before the social opportunity
- Provide the social opportunity immediately after viewing
- Reinforce correct performance; provide corrective feedback and re-watch if needed
- Fade video viewing as the learner demonstrates independence
Social Stories (Carol Gray)
Social Stories are individualized short stories that describe a social situation, relevant cues, and appropriate responses using a specific ratio of sentence types:
- Descriptive sentences: Factually describe the situation, setting, people, and actions
- Perspective sentences: Describe the thoughts, feelings, or reactions of others in the situation
- Directive sentences: Suggest an appropriate response (use "can" or "could," not "will" or "must")
- Affirmative sentences: Express shared values or reassurance
Guidelines
- Written in first person from the learner's perspective
- Positive and patient in tone — describe what to do, not what not to do
- Ratio of 2–5 descriptive/perspective/affirmative sentences for every 1 directive sentence
- Read the story before the social situation it addresses
- Practice regularly; fade as the skill generalizes
Social Stories are best used as a supplement to direct instruction, not as a standalone intervention. They are most effective for learners with reading comprehension skills who can internalize the narrative.
Peer-Mediated Interventions
Rationale
Peers are the natural social environment. Training peers as social facilitators produces more natural social interactions and promotes generalization more effectively than adult-mediated instruction alone.
Procedure
- Select peer trainers: Choose socially competent, willing peers who interact positively with diverse classmates
- Train peers using BST: Teach specific strategies — initiating with the target learner, responding to their initiations, prompting and waiting, reinforcing social attempts, persisting through initial non-responses
- Provide structured social opportunities: Arrange activities where the target learner and trained peers interact (cooperative games, joint activities, shared projects)
- Coach in vivo: Provide subtle prompts and feedback to peers during the activity
- Fade adult support: Reduce coaching as peer-mediated interactions become self-sustaining
- Monitor and reinforce peers: Maintain peer involvement through reinforcement and appreciation
Social Skills Groups
Structure
- 3–6 learners with similar skill levels and compatible social goals
- 45–90 minutes per session, 1–2 times per week
- Led by a trained clinician with an assistant for in-vivo prompting
- Typical session: warm-up activity → instruction/modeling → structured practice → free play/generalization activity → wrap-up/feedback
Curriculum Design
- Target 1–2 specific skills per session (not a grab-bag of skills)
- Build skills sequentially: basic (greetings, eye contact) → intermediate (turn-taking, sharing, conversation) → advanced (empathy, perspective-taking, conflict resolution)
- Include both structured practice and unstructured social time
- Incorporate learner-preferred activities to maintain motivation
Generalization Planning
- Practice skills in the group, then program for use in natural settings (classroom, playground, home)
- Send home skill cards or social stories for caregiver follow-through
- Coordinate with teachers to create practice opportunities during the school day
- Conduct periodic probes in natural settings to verify generalization
Pivotal Response Training for Social Skills
PRT targets pivotal areas that produce widespread collateral changes in social behavior:
- Motivation: Use child-preferred activities, natural reinforcers, and choice
- Self-management: Teach the learner to monitor and reinforce their own social behavior
- Multiple cues: Teach the learner to attend to multiple social cues (facial expression + tone + words)
- Self-initiations: Teach the learner to initiate social interactions and ask social questions
Teaching Specific Social Skills
Greetings
- Component skills: eye contact, waving/handshake, verbal greeting, using the person's name
- Teach discrimination: who to greet, when, what level of formality
Conversation Skills
- Initiating: approaching, getting attention appropriately, opening statement or question
- Maintaining: asking follow-up questions, commenting, staying on topic
- Terminating: recognizing cues that the conversation is ending, closing statements
Turn-Taking
- Waiting for a turn, signaling readiness, taking turns of appropriate length
- Board games, conversational turn-taking, activity sharing
Sharing
- Offering items, requesting items politely, dividing resources
Perspective-Taking
- Identifying emotions in others from facial expression, body language, context
- Predicting how others might feel or react
- Adjusting behavior based on another person's perspective
Data Collection for Social Skills
- Frequency: Number of social initiations, responses, or specific skill uses per observation period
- Duration: Length of social interactions, conversational exchanges
- Rating scales: Periodic administrations of standardized measures to track broad progress
- Social validity: Do significant others (parents, teachers, peers) perceive meaningful improvement?
- Generalization probes: Observations in untrained settings with untrained people
Key References
- Bellini, S. (2006). Building Social Relationships: A Systematic Approach to Teaching Social Interaction Skills to Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Other Social Difficulties. AAPC Publishing.
- Leaf, J. B., Townley-Cochran, D., Taubman, M., Cihon, J. H., Oppenheim-Leaf, M. L., Kassardjian, A., ... & McEachin, J. (2015). The teaching interaction procedure and behavioral skills training for social skills. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 8(2), 1–9.
- Gray, C. (2010). The New Social Story Book (Revised and Expanded 10th Anniversary ed.). Future Horizons.
- Reichow, B., & Volkmar, F. R. (2010). Social skills interventions for individuals with autism: Evaluation for evidence-based practices within a best evidence synthesis framework. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40(2), 149–166.
- Odom, S. L., & Strain, P. S. (1986). A comparison of peer-initiation and teacher-antecedent interventions for promoting reciprocal social interaction of autistic preschoolers. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 19(1), 59–71.
- Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2020). Applied Behavior Analysis (3rd ed.). Pearson.
