A school-based intervention for supporting the social, communication and friendship skills of children with autism and their classmates

• Register: ANZCTR
• Last refreshed on: 18 April 2017
• Main ID: ACTRN12617000538347
• Date of registration: 13/04/2017
• Prospective Registration: Yes
• Primary sponsor: Australian Catholic University
• Public title: A school-based intervention for supporting the social, communication and friendship skills of children with autism and their classmates
• Scientific title: A school-based intervention for supporting the social, communication and friendship skills of children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and their classmates: a multi-site randomised controlled trial (RCT).
• Date of first enrolment: 7/04/2017
• Target sample size: 20
• Recruitment status: Recruiting
• URL: http://www.anzctr.org.au/ACTRN12617000538347.aspx
• Study type: Interventional
• Study design: Randomised controlled trial Parallel
• Phase: Not Applicable

Health Condition(s) or Problem(s) studied

Autistic spectrum disorders

Social difficulities

communication difficulities

Intervention(s)

The intervention will primarily be implemented by the class teacher of the child with autism within the classroom. During the one-term intervention (8 weeks), the child with autism will watch a DVD episode with their class once per week (15-20 minutes). We also request parents watch the corresponding episode each week at home with their child to reinforce the skills being worked on by the whole class at school.. The intervention DVD is pre-taped, where youth who are actors model the desired skills. There is a superhero theme used throughout the DVD to appeal to children. The DVD contains 10 episodes, each focusing on a social or communication skill children with autism find difficult (e.g., perspective-taking, sharing, initiating interactions, repetitive play). During the week, the teacher will facilitate discussions with the child/their class before and after they go out to lunch (reminding them about the things they have learnt from the DVD). The discussions will occur Monday-Friday and last approximately 3-5 minutes before and after lunch.
There is also a video-modelling project where children film themselves playing/interacting during class activities and watch the footage back to the class and discuss it (these activities will happen with the whole class). The video-modelling project is a one-off project that will occur in the last week of the intervention. it is anticipated to take one hour from filming to class discussions. However, this will vary slightly depending on the individual teacher and their classroom routine/schedule.
Three class buddies will be selected by the teacher and trained by the researcher. The researcher will train the buddies for 30 minutes at the start of week one of the intervention. During the term the buddies will help facilitate social interactions in the playground for all children in their class.
Adherence will be monitored by researchers using a weekly checklist. Reasons for non-adherence of activities will be recorded (e.g., school camp, children away).