Interventions for Improving Social-Communication Skills for Adolescents and Adults with ASD: a Meta-analysis

There is a lack of services to support adolescents and adults with ASD in different areas including social-communication intervention. The purpose of this study is to conduct a meta-analysis determining effects of social-communication interventions in improving social-communication skills for adolescents and adults with ASD. A search of databases yielded 2,353 potential documents of which 41 documents met inclusion criteria. The finding of this study indicated that social-communication interventions across all documents are moderately effective in improving social-communication skills for adolescents and adults with ASD. This study investigated the effectiveness of social-communication interventions for these populations and also examined differential effects based on the moderator categories. There are statistically significant differences found for some potential moderators (interventions, implementers, communicative functions, and type of setting). Additional details on implementation, limitations, and future research are discussed.