Video-Based Interventions for Adolescents and Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review

Many individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience delays in the development of social and communications skills, which can limit their opportunities in higher education and employment resulting in an overall negative impact to their quality of life. This systematic review identifies 15 studies that explored the effectiveness of Video-Based Interventions (VBIs) for those with ASD during the critical years of adolescence and young adulthood. The 15 studies described herein found this to be an effective intervention for this population for the improvement of their vocational, daily living, and academic skills. In addition, VBIs allow for the maintenance and generalization of the different target behaviors that were examined. The majority of the studies located by this review also investigated the social validity of the intervention method with participants and caregivers and found these VBIs to have high social validity. Although a few studies that implemented VBIs to improve academic skills were located, the research on their use in this area was found to be lacking, indicating a gap in the research on VBIs. Increased usage of VBIs-including video modeling and video prompting-with the target population of those aged 15-28 with ASD is recommended with specific attention given to the use of VBIs to improve the academic and social skills of adolescents and young adults with ASD.