Effects of a Social Skills Intervention Among High School Students With Intellectual Disabilities and Autism and Their General Education Peers

Incorporating general education peers into social skills instructional programs has been effective at increasing social interaction of high school students with intellectual disabilities and autism with their classmates. In this study, communication book use (Hughes et al., 2000), combined with providing the opportunity to interact, was associated with increases in conversational initiations and responses of five high school students identified with intellectual disabilities and autism and their general education peers. We also addressed a limitation of Hughes et al. (2000) by expanding the role of peers during generalization to (a) engage in conversational interactions that were more reciprocal and typical of high school student dyads and (b) provide support to participants while interacting. This study adds to the few published social skills interventions involving high school students with intellectual disabilities and autism in inclusive settings and extends findings to a population of students with more varied communication characteristics.